


we're nothing more than dust jackets

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-06 07:51:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8741284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: A queen takes her revenge, a savior is hidden away, and a dark curse is cast. You’ve read this story a dozen times. But this time, Regina Mills wakes up with a book titled Emma, and Emma Swan is found wrapped in a baby blanket with her tiny fingers wrapped around a book titled Regina. As time passes, their counterpart’s story unfolds within the books; and for twenty-eight years, the two follow each other's lives from afar until the day a little boy runs away from home to find his birth mother...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [regalducky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/regalducky/gifts).
  * Inspired by [[Fanart] We're nothing more than dust jackets.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8801260) by [regalducky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/regalducky/pseuds/regalducky). 



> Much thanks go to many, many people who helped me work through this, including too many people to name on Twitter who helped with plot and reading to make sure it wasn't creepy af, lol. Thanks especially to Megan, who prompted this concept in the first place, and to Lauren, Maia, and Aimee for reading through on several occasions to help me with some issues with the narrative. And much thanks to Sarah for both the gorgeous art- and to all y'all for the encouragement and support for a story that grew _way_ out of control.
> 
> Most of all, thank you to the mods for all your hard work on making sure that Swen continues to have a longfic challenge! You've done a badass job on it all. <3

Regina sees the book on the first morning, resting on the side table by the mirror in her room, but she doesn’t think much of it. She’s too busy exploring the new world her curse has created– the prison she’s trapped her enemies within and the role she is to have within it– to look at an unfamiliar book titled _Emma_.

 

There is a boy in town a few days later, a father to deal with and a new existence where she yearns and feels odd guilt when she hurts, and she settles down on her bed, her town safe at last and her heart aching, and the book catches her eye.

 

It’s large, brown and gold and heavy like the sort of record book that embellishes selfish kings’ deeds, and she traces her fingers along the word _Emma_ with curiosity and finally pulls the book open.

 

First, she sees a wardrobe, a baby tucked inside, and her eyes narrow with suspicion. This child–

 

_The child screamed as she passed from one realm to the next, and it was only moments before a boy lifted her into his arms. “Shh,” he said, but his own heart thumped with the same terror that she could not yet understand. “We’re safe now.”_

 

_He walked from the woods with her in his arms, and behind them, a curse took hold of the land where they’d emerged._

 

Regina gapes at the page. _The savior_ . This book is her answer to the prophecy surrounding the curse, to the enemy who’s supposed to be her doom. This girl– this _baby_ , Emma– she’s the one who will grow up to be Regina’s ultimate foe?

 

She reads as quickly as she can, follows the story as the boy brings the baby to a diner and both are sent to an orphanage just out of Bangor. She turns the page, avidly interested, and is startled when she finds white, blank pages through the rest of the book. “Still unwritten, then,” she murmurs, her brow furrowing, and she calls Sidney and sends him on a quest to find an address.

 

 _Well, looks like getting rid of a baby just made my to-do list._ She’d said it flippantly to Rumple, without any plan, much like most of the decisions she’d made in her final hours before the curse. Now, she has a long drive to Bangor to run through it in her mind.

 

Can she kill a baby? Her men have done worse, at her orders. But those had been grand words, statements without considering consequences until there had been corpses at her feet and she’d first understood how truly _evil_ she’d become. She’d take a father from a child without a thought, would send children into a forest alone out of spite, but even thoughts of killing the child Snow White had horrified her for a long time.

 

This is Snow White’s spawn. This is her downfall. She has to do _something_.

 

She pulls over at a gas station eight miles to Bangor and reads new scrawling print that has been added to the blank page. It’s nothing more than a description of a dream, of a mother’s cries and evil laughter, and Regina’s jaw clenches as she shuts the book again.

 

She’ll work it out. She always does.

 

She strides into the orphanage with honeyed tones and a forged card identifying her as a social worker there to inspect conditions. “I’m sure I’ll have no problems here,” she assures an anxious guardian. A real social worker might have. The rooms are dilapidated, small and gloomy and cramped with children, and Regina has to tamp down the reawakened urge to spirit them all from this house and take them back to Storybrooke with her.

 

The urge falters as she steps away from the guardian and into a side room, where she sees, for only a moment–

 

–a baby wrapped in the blanket she’d seen in the book, giggling up at a redheaded boy who makes faces at her and then looks up. He looks skittish at first, and it’s a look she recognizes, as though he’s certain that he’ll be reprimanded just for standing there. And then his eyes darken and he’s whirling around the side of the crib, standing between her and the baby.

 

“Don’t touch her,” he says boldly, his little hands trembling. He’s just a few years younger than Owen, and Regina feels a pang. “I’ll yell.”

 

“I’m a social worker,” she says, pasting on a false smile. “I’m here to help little Emma.”

 

The boy glares at her. “I know who you are,” he says, and he’s still so afraid that the trembling hands have expanded into a trembling body, his teeth chattering and his voice shaky. But his eyes are determined even through the terror. “You can’t touch her. You’ll have to go through me first.”

 

“Bold. I like that in a child,” Regina says, quirking an eyebrow. The boy doesn’t move, though he quakes more violently. She suspects that if she takes another step forward, he might just faint instead of fighting back.

 

But to what end? She peers at the baby in the crib again, a foul taste in her mouth. If she takes the child to Storybrooke, she only assures her own destruction. If she…neutralizes the child…

 

She’s stepping back before she can exhale again, turning on her heel and stalking from the room as a wave of nausea overtakes her. Rumple had warned her of a hole in her heart and she’d laughed it off, but she can feel it now, gaping and open and threatening to suck everything she is into its oblivion. _No._ No, she can’t kill a child.

 

She opens the book once she’s fled the orphanage, reads about the baby’s fuzzy encounter with a _tall, dark lady_ , and she sets it aside and drives back to Storybrooke with her heart racing against her ribs.

  


The boy leaves her only days later, and Regina is unnaturally enraged at the news, betrayed by a child who’d only ever stood in her way. It comes as little comfort when Emma is adopted by a loving family.

 

* * *

 

Emma Swan had been found at the side of the road as a newborn with nothing more than a blanket and a big book titled _Regina_ , and she understands only bits and pieces of what any of that means. She’s three years old today and her mommy is gamely tugging her thumb from her mouth as she reads her a bedtime story from her favorite book.

 

“'Young Regina loved to ride, but she loved her time at the stables even more. The new stable boy was handsome and kind and her heart fluttered when he smiled at her, and her mother–‘ and how about we read something else tonight, Em?” her mommy says, sighing at the book. “Whoever left you with this book had a pretty screwed-up idea of what kid-friendly means.”

 

“No,” Emma says stubbornly, sticking her thumb back into her mouth. “Regina.” Sometimes she flips through the pages and sees that there are new pictures and words, stories about Regina that have her in changed clothes and in the same town that all of the later part of the book is about. But Mommy never seems to notice that there are new pages. She’d only looked oddly at Emma when Emma had pointed it out and said, “That’s always been there, baby. Do you want to color your own story about Regina?”

 

She doesn’t call Emma _baby_ anymore, and she’d looked pained the last time Emma had asked her why. There are new pink curtains in Emma’s little room, her toddler bed pushed against a side wall to make space for a crib that takes up half the room, and Emma is still wearing her too-short jeans from last year.

 

Emma likes looking at the pictures of Regina, the little girl just like her with dark hair and a mischievous smile and the pretty girl who rides horses and kisses stable boys. Regina wears loads of pretty dresses in the book, even when she’s sad for a long time and then angry, and then she wears important suits and has important meetings.

 

Emma likes to look at Snow White, too, but sometimes it makes her throat stick and her eyes sting and she doesn’t know why. Regina makes her smile when she looks at her pages, even if Mommy doesn’t smile back anymore.

 

* * *

 

Regina has grown to loathe that awful book about the savior. It remains a taunting memory of unfinished business, of a savior still at large and growing every day. Emma is sent from the Swan family to a new group home, then a foster home, then back to the group home. She has a mischievous streak and is stubborn enough to be branded _difficult_. She punches an older boy in the nose for bullying one of the little ones, and he punches her back. The most recent picture in the book is Emma standing proudly with a black eye and split lip, and Regina is unexpectedly fond.

 

 _No_. She loathes the book, loathes the record of the savior’s life as it unfolds. Emma Swan is the enemy, and adorable images of a five-year-old girl don’t change that. She is irritated enough by the book that she leaves it in her vault one day, far from easy access, in the hopes that she may yet let it be.

 

But she can’t let it be, somehow. She can’t have the story of the savior’s life in her hands and just _forget it_. So instead she cultivates her own loathing, trains herself to hate a little girl who’s done nothing but survive alone, and it works for a little while.

 

She sneers at her loneliness, at foster families who take her and reject her just as swiftly. She’s a perfect little girl who should be a favored addition to any family; but somehow, Emma never quite fits. She’s too prickly, too old for her age; she punches too quickly and asks questions later; she doesn’t smile enough and when she does, it looks artificial and unsettling.

 

It had been easy to resent spoiled, charming Snow White. It’s harder to resent her daughter, who will be Regina’s downfall as much as her mother.

 

* * *

 

For her part, as Emma grows up and learns to read, she begins to understand a bit more about the book in her possession. The stories inside are sometimes dark and sometimes scary, but they’re a sort of _explanation_ , too, a reason why she doesn’t have parents that helps, kind of.

 

She’s the baby in the story, the one that Snow White had sent away to save the world. Sometimes she’ll pretend, wander through a backyard trying to talk to birds and spin gracefully, but inevitably she trips and finds herself in the dirt with a blue jay pecking at her palm.

 

When she thinks about it too much, she is sad again. She doesn’t want to be Regina’s enemy, not after years and years poring over her story. Even if Snow is her mother, Regina is…

 

Regina is a part of her, really, someone she knows better than herself. She follows every update of her story with avid interest, no matter how dull and ordinary Regina’s life has become. Regina feels vivid and real, a permanent fixture in Emma’s life, and Emma believes in fairytales more than she believes in any of the real people who surround her.

 

She loses her first tooth in a worn-down group home, the sort where no one notices it or sees when she tucks it under her pillow and waits, awake all night, for the tooth fairy to come. One time, a fairy had come to Regina, and it had ended badly; and Emma wants to know if the tooth fairy has met Tinkerbell and might tell her what happened to her.

 

She huddles under her blanket, watchful at every creak in the doorway or movement of the shades. But the tooth fairy never comes, and Emma thinks it must be because she was watching.

 

She tries the next night, too, determined to meet the tooth fairy, but morning comes and there’s only a tooth tucked under her pillow and nothing more. Night after night she waits, falling asleep only when she’s exhausted and with no results, and Emma’s belief in fairies and the book and Regina begins to falter.

 

She leaves the tooth under her pillow and stops thinking about it at all, stops checking for coins in the mornings and tries to push aside Regina’s book until she gets a letter in the mail.

 

That’s never happened before. She tears it open, baffled, and she’s startled when she unfolds it and a five-dollar bill falls to the ground.

 

She snatches it up and reads the neat print of the letter.

 

_Dear Emma,_

_My apologies for being so late to collect your tooth. I have been occupied with a rather fearsome dragon with a loose tooth, and I’m afraid he’s scorched my wings too much for me to fly over and collect your tooth personally. Still, a tooth left for me is still a tooth left for me, and your dedication must be rewarded. Keep your payment for something important. I hear there’s an ice cream truck that stops outside your house just before dinner._

_Regards,_

_The Tooth Fairy_

 

Emma clutches the letter close, sleeps with it under her pillow and brings it to school until it’s falling apart and the words are fading. She buys ice cream for two days and spends the extras on the littler kids in the group home, and then one day one of the group mothers washes her jeans with the letter still inside and it’s ruined forever.

 

She cries in the woods behind the house, hugging Regina’s book tightly to her and vowing that she’ll leave out every tooth she loses for the tooth fairy to collect.

 

Six weeks later, she sees the nicest of the group mothers slipping a quarter under Jalil’s pillow one night and she learns instead that the tooth fairy isn’t real.

 

* * *

 

It’s an absurd, indulgent thing, making the savior believe in the tooth fairy. It’s not as though Regina’s _invested_ in Emma Swan. It had only been tiresome, watching a little girl stubbornly believe so hard in a fairytale, and Regina had taken action before the girl had killed herself of sleep deprivation. That’s _all_.

 

Emma is only a child now, regardless of whom she might become, and Regina has always had a soft spot for children. She imagines that when they meet, twenty-eight years after the curse had been cast, she will feel less charitably toward the girl.

 

Twenty-two years. She still has twenty-two years.

 

Twenty-two become twenty-one become twenty, and Regina flips through Emma’s book and struggles to maintain her disdain. Emma is eight years old and still hasn’t found a family. She doesn’t believe in the tooth fairy anymore, doesn’t seem to believe in much at all, and Regina’s heart throbs in her chest at every reminder of that disbelief.

 

It’s easier this way. The savior who doesn’t know she has a destiny is a safer savior, a savior who might spare Regina’s world by sheer obliviousness. She thinks less of her as time passes, reads the book only a few nights a week to make sure that Emma is…well, unchanged. The changes come gradually.

 

There isn’t much else to think about in Storybrooke. The town is the same, day after day, and the glee of _winning_ had faded after only a month or two of the curse. She throws herself into the everyday of her work, finding solace in numbers and budgets and control. The only changes that Regina can see are within Emma’s book, a little girl fighting every day to stay standing.

 

She’s flipping through the book one evening after Town Hall has emptied, eyes drawn to a picture of Emma walking with a new set of parents. Her shoulders are hunched over and she still looks at them with the barest, anguished sort of hope. They aren’t looking at her at all.

 

Regina huffs out a frustrated breath and closes the book, her jaw working beneath her skin, and she’s about to stand when she sees a shadow in the doorway. “Who’s there?”

 

There’s no answer. Regina tucks the book under her arm, stepping out cautiously from behind her desk. “Show yourself!”

 

“How imperious,” a vaguely familiar voice drawls. “But you aren’t the one giving the orders anymore, are you, Your Majesty?”

 

“I think you’ll find that you’re mistaken,” Regina says, shifting back toward her desk in an attempt to call security. There’s a distinct sound of a gun being cocked, and she freezes.

 

“Not so fast,” the man says, stepping into view. Regina sees a shadowy face, concealed beneath a hat, and she recognizes him at once. “Eight years, Regina. Eight years of…struggling to think through the madness you unleashed in my mind until I could find my Grace. But now I know.”

 

“You know nothing, Jefferson,” Regina says coldly. “I didn’t unleash that madness. You did that all to yourself.” She’s thought little about him since he’d wound up here. He’s been off in that big house on the outskirts of town and he hadn’t attacked her yet, so she’d thought–

 

But no, he’d only been muddling through until he’d broken free, gun in hand and murder and madness in his eyes. She takes a step back, shaken, and Jefferson jabs the gun at her. “Now you pay for what you’ve done, Your Majesty. Did you think I’d sit by forever passively, accepting it all? Did you think you could wipe my memories and take my daughter from me?”

 

“I cast my curse. I didn’t _do_ anything to your daughter but give her a safe, loving family,” Regina grits out. “One that hadn’t _abandoned_ her.”

 

“Fuck you. Fuck you, Regina.” The gun is cocked and she can feel another flash of fear shoot through her, though she stands tall in response. Her hands don’t shake. His do, unsteady on the trigger. “Time to see who’s _really_ going to lose their mind.”

 

Regina lifts her chin, teeth bared. Jefferson raises the gun and pulls the trigger.

 

There’s a spark of energy, burning hot as it sears Regina’s skin and crackles around the gun. Jefferson screams. Regina stares, wordless, at the impossible magic that’s emerging from… _Emma’s book? No._ But it’s unmistakable, flying from the closed pages to protect her from Jefferson, and the gun crashes to the floor and the magic dissipates just as security finally tears into the room.

 

Regina stumbles backward, gaping at the book in her arms as her heart pounds against her ribs.

 

* * *

 

It had been one of the strangest things Emma had ever done, bent over the book as new words had appeared, hoping desperately that _something_ would save a fictional character from certain death. She’d been terrified for Regina’s sake, fearful of this new villain who’d arrived to harm her, and suddenly there’d been a… _something_ , sparking from her fingers and into the book.

 

Next she’d known, the book had informed her that a surge of magic had come from Regina and protected her against her attacker. It couldn’t have been her. She doesn’t have _magic_ , and certainly not to change the story.

 

Sometimes she wonders if she’d written it herself somehow, if she’s writing in her sleep or forgetting or any of those things that happened in the movies that her last foster father had liked to watch. No one else seems to have books that write themselves, and no one believes her when she tells them about hers. It’s just another odd fact of her life, and she wonders if she’d imagined the spark of magic that had traveled from her fingers into the book.

 

She tries to change things again one afternoon, reads about a lonely day where Regina snaps at too many people and goes to her vault and cries over her father’s grave. She concentrates as hard as she can on the picture of Regina that fades into the page, her head bent forward and her eyes closed, and tries to light the candle on the shelf over Regina.

 

For a moment, she thinks that the light in the picture might have yellowed just a bit more, that she might have really done it. Then it fades again, lost into the dark, and she bites her lip and turns away when Javi tells her that they’re going to play outside.

 

She’s eight years old. Maybe it’s time she stopped believing in magic and fairytales, when none seem to be coming for her.

 

* * *

 

At ten, Emma is moved from yet another foster family in Minnesota to a group home in Boston. In a picture on the bus, her lips are pressed together grimly, her face set, and only her eyes bely something more than the hardness of too many years on her own. Regina traces Emma's face with her eyes, reads as much as she can from a faux-drawn picture, and breathes in a low, even breath.

 

“Cancel my meetings for tomorrow,” she says briskly, slipping the book into her briefcase. “I have business to attend to out of town.”

 

It’s foolhardy, ridiculous, but Boston is close enough that she can’t pass up the chance to glimpse the growing savior in person. ( _And do what?_ she wonders, and pushes that doubt aside swiftly.)

 

It isn’t hard to find Emma, once she’s in the city. The book updates her more often now, as though it knows that she’s tracking Emma down, and she follows its winding path down a series of steep roads to flat, less ostentatious apartments. She drives a few more minutes until she sees a shabby park outside a flat, ugly building, overgrown weeds where there must have once been a grassy walkway and a decent enough playground kept pristine in the center.

 

There are children hanging from parallel bars, chasing each other up and down the slides, and racing through a sprinkler that shouldn’t be running this late in the season. Regina sits on a bench, the book closed on her lap, and tears her eyes away from the laughing children to search the park for one child in particular.

 

She recognizes her instantly. Years of flipping through blurry drawings have finally come in handy and Emma Swan is as familiar as any Storybrooke constituent, hunched over near the weeds with blue-green eyes skittish and reluctant as other children laugh and shove past her. She stands up to shift out of their way, leaning against a fence instead, and Regina almost gasps aloud.

 

She’s holding a book against her, arms crossed over it and fingers curled onto its edges. Regina’s fingers curl over the edges of her identical book, squeezing so tightly that her knuckles turn white, and she can only stare at Emma in horror.

 

Which book does she have? Is it another titled _Emma_ , her destiny unfolding within it? Is it a book about her mother, or the old world, or…? Regina snaps her mouth closed, fighting for equanimity, and she looks up from the book into narrowed green eyes.

 

Emma watches her in solemn silence, her eyes flickering down to Regina’s book; and they stand frozen in their places, gazes locked from across the park. Regina can’t breathe; sweeps her eyes over this little girl who is her greatest downfall; thinks _she’s really so young_ instead of _kill her before she kills you._

 

For a moment she wants nothing more than to walk away. She wants to step out of the park and have Emma’s bright curiosity follow her, through dark alleys and around the streets of Boston until Regina can talk to her alone and convince her to come with her. She wants to take this little girl back to her mansion, to keep her safe within it from the world that has rejected them and their shared destiny. She wants Emma to be _happy_ , and–

 

– _No_ . She jerks back, her eyes wide and horrified at the path her thoughts had taken. God, no. She loathes the savior, resents the savior, will not muster up sympathy for the savior. No book can change who Emma is and who Regina is. That child in too-large plaid who clutches onto a book of her own like it’s a lifeline…she isn’t someone to be kept _safe_.

 

She clenches her fingers ever more tightly around the book and waits in tortured silence as Emma’s eyes flicker over her again. But Emma is too hard, too wary to step forward and inquire from a stranger. Emma won’t approach her, she knows with the familiarity of years spent studying a child.

 

And Emma doesn’t. She slips away when the children are called back to the flat building, vanishing from sight and from Regina’s grasp again. Regina exhales, feeling as though she’s lost something vital, and strides back to her car with her head high and only her wringing fingers against the side of the book a sign of any turmoil within.

 

* * *

 

A girl breaks away from the group and runs back to the park, through the tall weeds with determination, and skids to a halt several feet from the bench where Regina had sat.

 

There is no sign of a mysterious woman with a matching book there. There’s nothing there, as though she’d never been there at all.

  
It really is time to stop dreaming.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hey, what’s with this old book?” Lily says, wrinkling her nose. She flips it open before Emma can snatch it away, squinting at a picture. “Some kind of fairytale?” 

 

“Give it back,” Emma protests, tugging it back to her. As much as she likes Lily, it’s been roughly two hours that they’ve known each other and she’s not ready to share the book.

 

Not that she’s read it in a long time. After that confusing incident in the park– the one where she’d  _ thought  _ she’d seen a woman who’d looked like Regina, where an accompanying picture had appeared in the book and Emma had been so unsettled that she hadn’t looked at the book for a week– she’d started reading it more carefully.

 

And, well…before, she’d read it as a fantasy, as the story of just another girl and her adventures. There had been the revelation of Snow White’s baby that Emma had once been sure was meant to be her, but the rest of the story had been Regina’s. Regina is the hero of the piece, flawed as she might be.

 

But Emma isn’t a kid anymore, and as she’d reread the faithful depiction of the Evil Queen, she’d noticed for the first time that Regina might be the hero of her own story, but she’s the villain of everyone else’s. And not in the badass  _ freed herself from the king  _ kind of way. Regina  _ kills  _ people, had spent years trying to kill Snow White, and rules with an iron fist.

 

And if Regina is the villain of her kingdom’s stories, Emma is the villain of Regina’s. Snow White’s baby is the child who can destroy the Evil Queen and break her curse. If Regina had ever met her in person, in some universe where she isn’t just a character in a book and Emma really had seen her at the park, then it would be as mortal enemies.

 

She’d had a sour taste in her mouth at the revelation, and hadn’t wanted to look at the book at all after that. She  _ knows  _ Regina, understands why she’d made the decisions she had and how she’d fallen so far. She sees too much of herself in Regina at fifteen and Regina at twenty-five, and she can’t bear to imagine even a story where Regina would hate her. 

 

She’d tucked it away for a long time, had only removed it when she’d run from the group home, and she hasn’t even looked inside it for years. She does it now, under Lily’s watchful eye.

 

It’s all the same. Nothing changes in Storybrooke, and Regina’s life continues as grey as it had been before. Emma shuts the book, hollow as Regina must be in her self-made prison, and musters up a smile for Lily. “So, what now?” 

 

* * *

 

Emma’s newest friend is a derelict who breaks into a house with her and draws a star on her wrist and then kisses her before they switch off the lights. Regina remembers being fifteen and stumbling into puppy love, starry-eyed after every kiss and certain that each smile had meant something glorious.

 

She frowns at the memory, feeling the wash of irritation and frustration that accompanies every thought of  _ before the king _ , and peers at the two photos that adorn the page of Emma’s encounter with Lily.

 

Strange. She hadn’t noticed that man in the background before. He’s dark-eyed and very thin, his skin waxy pale, and he’s watching both girls from just behind a bush.

 

No, not both girls. Emma.

 

With rising dread, Regina flips back through recent pages, examining the pictures of Emma since she’d hopped onto the bus to Minnesota. There’s the man again, sitting behind her on the bus. And again, immersed in the cereal aisle as Emma is confronted by a grocery clerk.

 

It must be a coincidence. But Regina is back at the book the next day, studying new photos as they appear. The miscreant has been caught and returned to her family, and Emma is heartbroken and alone again. She’s learned a few tricks from Lily, though, enough to swipe a credit card and find a hostel that won’t question a fourteen-year-old with a backpack and the money to pay for a place to stay. 

 

The man is there again, hovering outside the hostel and following Emma when she ducks out to the store again. Regina watches the words appear on the page, heart in her throat, and when Emma cuts through an alley, oblivious to the man following her, she holds the page so tightly that it tears. 

 

The man is just behind her, visible in the dark in the picture that appears. Then–  _ A siren blares from somewhere nearby, and Emma jolts in a panic, tucking her bag to her and racing back to the hostel.  _ Regina exhales, shutting her eyes for a moment, and reaches for her phone. “Sidney,” she says, a finger running down the tear on the page. “I need you to report a credit card theft.” 

 

* * *

 

Emma is found, traced with the credit card and sent back into the foster system with a warning. She finds a new family, loses it almost immediately, and finally settles in at a new group home where she actually likes the group mother. Ingrid favors her enough that the worst of the other kids leave her alone, and Emma finds an odd sort of contentment that she’s never felt before.

 

She’s curled on the couch with her backpack a few weeks into her stay with Ingrid, looking through the images on her video camera, when Ingrid says, “What’s that book?” 

 

“Oh.” Emma’s first inclination is to seize it and hold it close, the old urge to protect Regina as  _ hers _ and  _ only hers _ . But Ingrid is good to her, someone she might even trust, and she slides the book over reluctantly. “I was found with it when I was a baby. It’s just a book of fairytales.” 

 

“Regina,” Ingrid says, brow creasing as she opens it. “This was…this is from…” She turns the pages quickly, glancing from one to the next and pausing on a picture of Regina as a young queen, a fireball in her hand. Ingrid’s eyes narrow, and Emma tilts her head, suddenly worried that she’d done something wrong.

 

“It’s just a book,” she says again, but it’s too quick and unsteady and it has Ingrid turning, watching her with suddenly sharp eyes. “I…I don’t think it’s from anywhere.” She laughs uncertainly. “When I was little, I used to think I was the baby in the story and my parents sent me here to escape a curse. That I was some…secret princess or something.” She drags her finger over the edge of the open book.

 

Ingrid closes it, pulling it away from her. “You don’t need to be a princess to be special, Emma,” she says, her eyes glittering with a secret kind of light. Emma is unnerved. “You don’t need any of the people who’ve hurt you and rejected you. You’re different from the characters in this book.” She frowns again at the drawing of Regina, eyes dark. “Please, put it away. I don’t want to see something that’s caused you so much pain.” 

 

So Emma puts it away, because maybe Ingrid’s right, even if she’s talking about the characters in the book like they’re real. Ingrid’s weird like that. But daydreaming about those kinds of magical fairytales has never ended well for Emma, and Ingrid seems like the only person in the world who seems to care about her. 

 

And Ingrid does care, cares more than Emma could ever believe, up until the moment she pushes Emma in front of a car in an attempt to prove that magic is real. She’s  _ crazy _ , of course. The one person in the universe who loves Emma would have to be crazy to want to keep her. 

 

She doesn’t cry. Crying won’t get her anywhere. Instead, she lifts up her chin and  _ moves. _

 

Emma runs, runs from Ingrid and group homes and the bleak future of the next family to reject her. She races into the house before Ingrid can get there, somehow, digs through her things and stuffs them into her backpack and  _ runs _ , out of the town and state and everything that had gone so very wrong in Minnesota.

 

When she’s safe on the bus with a ticket she’d bought with money stolen from Ingrid, she finally pulls out her book to read it for the first time in weeks.

 

And there’s Regina, the only true constant in her life, going about her dull, daily routine. It’s comforting, almost, how humdrum it is but how  _ familiar _ , Storybrooke closing in on Regina like a vise and closing in on Emma like an embrace. She’s somehow unsurprised when she reaches the final recent update, the words still scrawling across the page, and sees Regina is standing alone in the dark of her family crypt, tears rolling down her face. 

 

The book describes her sorrow as  _ ennui, a despair without explanation that might have been diagnosed as depression in a world where she’d ever wondered enough to find out.  _ Emma aches for herself and for Regina, for too much freedom that isn’t freedom at all. 

 

Without conscious thought, she traces her fingers over the unlit candles in the drawing, focusing as she had once before in a time she’d nearly forgotten. Ingrid had made grand declarations about magic and she’d put Emma in harm’s way to defend them, but Emma doesn’t need grand declarations now. She just needs the brightening yellow of the candles on the shelves around Regina, a new picture appearing below the first as the words scribble their way across the page.

 

The candles are lit in the second photo, and Regina has raised her tearstained face upward to gaze at them in bewildered wonder. Emma squeezes her eyes shut– makes them brighter, makes them warmer, casts all she is into a woman who isn’t real– and the book informs her,  _ Regina turned in place, a glow suffusing the room and her heart at once, and she smiled for perhaps the first time in years. _

 

And finally, finally, Regina’s eyes bright while Emma huddles on a bus and traces her features with her gaze, Emma allows herself to sob over all she’s lost.

 

* * *

 

An odd thing happens after Ingrid. 

 

Regina had hated Ingrid from the start, hated how dismissive she’d been about everything that had made Emma  _ Emma  _ when it hadn’t suited her image of the two of them as a perfect family. Ingrid had been possessive and carefully grooming Emma for some twisted purpose that Regina couldn’t divine, but she’d hated it regardless.

 

And then Ingrid had  _ fucking  _ pushed Emma in front of a car to draw out her magic, and Regina should have felt smug about being proven right about that woman. Instead she’d cried, felt helpless and trapped and had loathed herself more than had been her standard. She’d set the book down and picked it up again and hadn’t understood why it had twisted her stomach just to look at Emma anymore.

 

_ Guilt _ , she finally grasps, days later, and she’s so appalled with herself that she makes an appointment with Archie and promptly cancels it an hour later. She feels  _ guilty  _ about Emma losing Ingrid and that family, and she can’t justify it as she has so much. 

 

She makes phone calls left and right, arranging for Good Samaritans on Emma’s route to offer her meals or leave behind unmarked wallets after getting off busses. Emma takes what she finds, scrambles to survive on her own and manages to land on her feet with intervention that she never recognizes as such. She calls the cops on those who would take advantage of a little girl on the run, and panics twice when she thinks she sees that old stalker in the background of pictures. But Emma  _ survives _ , miserable and alone, and Regina can still feel the guilt eating away at her.

 

Another odd thing happens: Emma begins to believe in people again, slowly but surely. She gets enough help from strangers– some from Regina, some independent of her coercion– that the harshest layers she’d coated herself with begin to fade, begin to be replaced with tentative optimism again. Regina watches the transformation with even more guilt. This girl is no Snow White. This girl doesn’t have a world prepared to coddle her, and if she believes…if she gets hurt because Regina had made her believe in people’s inherent goodness again…

 

When Emma is seventeen, she breaks into a hideous yellow Volkswagen Beetle and finds out that it’s already been stolen.

 

* * *

 

Neal is scruffy and kind of an asshole but he’s also good company, and there’s something about him that Emma can’t help but like. It doesn’t take long before their partnership becomes something more, and Emma is…floaty in weird ways, floaty like kissing Lily one night on someone else’s couch, floaty like Ingrid telling her she loved her, floaty like Regina’s eyes when she’d been surrounded by glowing candles. 

 

She can’t believe she’s finally found a place to belong, a place where she has  _ someone  _ and a home that’s wherever the Bug takes them. Stealing has always given her a kind of rush, but now it feels like something  _ more _ , like a piece of who she is and who she’s become. Neal is on the run and they don’t stay still, but one day he promises her  _ Tallahassee  _ and they make plans for a real, stable future. 

 

She tucks her book under the passenger seat of the car and forgets about it for a while. Neal wouldn’t understand what it was, anyway. And now that she has a real companion, she doesn’t need an imaginary Evil Queen of a friend anymore. 

  
  


Regina hates Neal, too. Regina’s beginning to discover that she hates most of the people in Emma’s life, if only for their sheer unworthiness. If Emma’s going to be her someday nemesis, that means she deserves better companions than a scruffy nobody who gives her charming smiles and promises her a world Regina  _ knows  _ he won’t deliver.

 

Regina remembers seventeen, remembers believing so ardently in the power of true love that it had taken a darkened stable and Mother’s sharp voice,  _ Love is weakness, Regina _ , before she’d thought otherwise. Regina sees something much worse than Daniel in Neal’s roguish smile. Regina thinks  _ this man is going to betray you _ and she can’t do anything about it.

 

And when he does– when Emma’s smile fades and she’s standing alone against a wall with her hands up and heartbreak in her eyes– Regina still can’t summon up the smugness she’d intended. She’s failed already, seventeen years into the curse. She cares too deeply, is too attached to the savior who will destroy her, and she’s destroyed herself instead. She’s supposed to  _ exult  _ in the savior’s imprisonment. Instead she’s miserable from afar, glaring at page after page of Emma in grey walls with empty eyes.

 

Eleven months shouldn’t be too long. Eleven months is just a tiny chunk of Emma’s long life, and Emma is in a minimum-security prison and is still a minor. She’s going to be  _ fine _ . Regina knows she’s going to be fine, and this won’t destroy her.

 

And then comes Emma cross-legged on her bed, staring blankly at a positive pregnancy test, and Regina’s determination rises as her stomach twists and falls, falls, falls.

 

* * *

 

When Emma emerges from prison, she takes the keys to the Bug with no intention to use the car. It’s tainted now, poisoned with the lies that Neal had fed her before he’d abandoned her and their– their–

 

She isn’t going to use the car. She’s just going to get what belongs to her and leave. 

 

She brushes past a tall, thin man standing at the corner of the street where Neal had left the car. He has a familiar face, and she looks at him twice with sudden wariness. He looks back, and Emma can’t remember when she would have seen him before and moves onward to the trunk of the Bug. 

 

_ There _ . Her baby blanket, some photos, the video camera she’d taken around when she’d been fourteen. A few old trinkets she’d kept with her for years and years.

 

She shuts the trunk and climbs into the passenger seat, sliding her hand underneath and feeling around until her fingers land on something hard.  _ Good _ . Neal might have been a crafty bastard, but he hadn’t found the one item she’d kept secret from him. She tugs out the book, smoothing down the pages and touching the scripted  _ Regina  _ on the cover with understated longing. 

 

Regina is  _ home _ , home in a way that Emma had once thought so many others might be. Regina can’t let her down, and she flips through the pages with embarrassing eagerness as she hunts for the eleven months of new material that should be in the book now.

 

And when she does, she finds only cruel irony, her final haven stripped away from her as well. Regina– in the months since she’d been gone, Regina had finally countered her own loneliness by  _ adopting a baby _ , a precious little boy whom she’d struggled with for days and nearly brought back, whom she loves more than anything in the universe. Emma would have done anything to have a mom like that. Emma would have done anything to give her son–

 

_ Her son _ , and it still sounds alien and false, a cruel trick of fate that she’d never been meant for,  _ I can’t be a mother  _ the truest admission she’d ever made–

 

Regina has a son now, and Emma can feel the carefully-wrought steel around her heart rust over and begin to crack with only the image of Regina in her kitchen, kissing the baby boy’s cheek. 

 

She slides the book back under the seat. She can’t touch it again. 

 

She can’t leave it behind, either, and so she slips into the driver’s seat and starts the car with dull, grim eyes.

 

* * *

 

Regina discovers early on in her parenting adventure that Emma has gotten too deep under her skin. She’s still checking in daily, balancing Henry in one arm and cooing to him about  _ the savior _ , and it takes only a few days of Henry crying ceaselessly before she realizes that all of this was a miserable mistake. 

 

She’d been too focused on Emma when she’d found out about Henry, too focused on her own guilt and attachment to a girl who is only a character in a book to her. She’s forgotten her own destiny, and Henry’s cries are a stark reminder of the fact that Emma is her  _ enemy _ . 

 

Emma’s going to come to town someday, and take her curse and her son without a second thought. Regina had engineered her own destruction and now she’s helpless to resist it, and Henry screams when she holds him and calms when Mary Margaret coos to him. Henry can sense it, somehow.

 

But then there are moments when he’s calm with her, when his little face unscrews and he gurgles when she kisses him, and he’s so much more than just Emma’s birth son. He’s  _ Regina’s _ , and she loves him more than she hates herself.

 

She can’t take a potion and forget Emma, not when there’s a book that would jog her memory the moment she tried. No, she just has to…push it all aside, and give her whole heart to Henry. Obsessing over Emma and her downfall will only interfere with her ability to give Henry the love he deserves.

 

She tucks the book away in the attic with Henry’s newborn clothes, and she resists the urge to look at it again for a long, long time.

 

* * *

 

Emma doesn’t look at the book again. There are years on the run, too many run-ins and too many close calls. She makes some terrible decisions when it comes to her love life and some even more terrible decisions when it comes to breaking the law. She immerses herself in the present, because the past  _ sucks  _ and the future looks just as bleak. 

 

It’s okay. She survives. She’s good at surviving, she’s learned, even when there are a lot fewer people out there who’ll help an adult woman out of the goodness of their hearts as there had been when she’d been a teenager. She gets jobs and eventually loses them, and she fights hard to gain some kind of footing in the world and fails, time and again.

 

She goes back to Maine, where she’d begun, and she finds new purpose when she casts aside her past for good. She moves to Boston and becomes a bail bondswoman, and she’s  _ good  _ at it. She pours every last bit of resentment at the world into roughing up creeps who’ve abandoned their families like her parents had.

 

“When you don’t think too much about it, it makes sense, right?” she says, gesturing too hard and knocking over her neighbor’s glass. He’s very tall and has a sort of generic kind of face with unsettlingly dark eyes, but he’s also polite enough to say “I’ve been told” and still listen to her drunken babbling.

 

“Forgetting the past?” he inquires, his voice flat even when he asks the question. 

 

“Yeah. Like…I don’t know.” She shrugs and screws up her face. “I had a kid, okay? But not really. And this book. There was this lady. She was pretty fucking hot, now that I think about it.” She winces, her headache only partially from her fifth drink. Thoughts of the kid-that-wasn’t and Regina, who might actually be an age-appropriate crush now, tend to do that to her. “You lose everyone eventually. Why bother remembering them?” 

 

“I tend to agree,” the man says, and there’s something low and unpleasant in his voice, like nails scratching against a chalkboard.

 

She shifts away from him. “Okay, don’t get creepy about it. I gotta go.” 

 

“We’ll see each other again,” he assures her, and he smiles a rictus smile. He looks like death, a little, if death had a face.

 

“Back down, buddy,” she orders him, and stumbles out of the bar with her legs wobbly but good enough to carry her across the street and into the elevator to her apartment.

 

It’s 12:03 AM when she manages to unlock the door and collapse onto the couch. “Happy birthday to me,” she mutters, and laughs helplessly until she falls asleep, a draft cooling her tearstained cheeks.

 

* * *

 

Regina still remembers a time years ago when she’d nearly broken down with guilt at what she’d done to Emma Swan, alone in her vault, and the candles around her had suddenly burst into flame. She hadn’t known what it had meant but it had felt warm,  _ good _ in a way that she’d never been, and she’d been lighter and freer in that moment than she had felt since she’d been a girl riding her horse. 

 

Every day with Henry feels like that, lightness where there’d been nothing but quicksand before. Some days are hard– some days have her locking herself in the bathroom after a particularly rough moment and burying her face in her hands and sobbing– but somehow, every night she goes to sleep with the same determination. She won’t be her mother. She  _ will  _ be the mother that Henry deserves. 

 

And there are moments when she thinks that she’s fucked it all up, that she never should have been trusted with this baby boy. The decision had been so  _ simple  _ when it had been Emma in the book, desperate and alone, and Regina had quailed at the idea of her baby being given to a stranger. The decision had gotten only simpler the first time Regina had held Henry in her arms, and now she thinks only rarely of the girl who’d given birth to him. 

 

She’s finally broken free of Emma’s influence on her, replacing it with the much less destructive influence of her son’s smile instead. And even if she’s  _ awful  _ at this, even if sometimes she’s too harsh and Henry cries and she quakes and runs to him and holds him until they’re both asleep in his bed, he  _ wants  _ her, and that makes all the difference. 

 

Henry grows up, her sunshine boy who’s so inquisitive and stubborn and makes friends with every adult in town. She’s drawn into conversations she’d never wanted to be a part of, learns to smile back at people she loathes, and Henry beams and holds her hand and she is anchored, just like that.

 

She doesn’t think about the curse anymore, about twenty-eight years nearly over or about a girl who must not be a girl anymore and may come to Storybrooke someday. She doesn’t think about her past, not when the future seems so bright.

 

Henry grows up and something shifts, just after he turns ten. He comes home one day with a book under his arm, big and brown and identical to the one Regina had stored in the attic years ago. Regina’s blood runs cold. “Where did you get that?” 

 

She gets only a shrug in response, Henry’s eyes shadowed as they’ve never been before. And then, a low, “Why did you lie to me about my mother?” 

 

Something breaks in that moment, shatters with a crash that only Regina can hear, and she doesn’t breathe until Henry’s upstairs, the book still tucked under his arm.

 

Somehow still, when the school calls six weeks later to inquire why Henry isn’t there that day, Regina doesn’t understand at first. She flies into a panic and has Graham scour every inch of Storybrooke throughout the day as she snaps out complaints to the school board and threatens Gold and collapses to her knees on her kitchen floor, her face buried in her hands.

 

“Was there any friction between you?” Graham says, as gently as he can manage. He fails, of course, which suits Regina just fine. She doesn’t want to be  _ coddled  _ when Henry is missing. “Anything that might have spurred him to run off?” 

 

“Everything is fine,” Regina grits out. It hadn’t been, not for a while. Henry had somehow– Henry had transformed, sullen and angry and closed off, and Regina had made helpless appointments at Archie’s and gone back to bathroom tears. That  _ book  _ is at the root of it but she’s only been able to see the title–  _ Henry _ , written in gold where Regina’s book says  _ Emma _ – and nothing within it.

 

The book.

 

_ The book _ .

 

She’s filling out a missing person’s report at the station when the pieces come together, slowly, terribly. She puts in the date and thinks offhand, as she had every other year on this day,  _ Emma’s birthday _ . 

 

_ Emma’s twenty-eighth birthday _ . With shaking hands, she walks from the station, Graham trailing behind her, and returns to her house. She pulls down the ladder to the attic and climbs up barefoot, crawling around the dusty area until she finds a box labeled  _ Henry, newborn–6mo _ , and pulls out the book beneath the box.

 

There are more pages to flip through now, a blur of blonde hair and red jackets and Emma Swan as she’d never seen her before. She can’t look. She can’t think about anything other than finding Henry in this moment.

 

And so: she finds Henry. He’s in the very last picture in the book, seated comfortably in Emma’s yellow Bug as Emma stares straight ahead into the night.  _ “Okay. Where’s home?” Emma asked the boy, still thrown by his appearance in her life. _

  
_ The boy smiled. “Storybrooke, Maine,” he said.  _


	3. Chapter 3

“ _ What _ ?” Emma says, her voice rising. The kid–  _ Henry _ , he’d said his name is, like some relic of another time– is still staring at her, an eyebrow quirked, and Emma forces her breath back to evenness and says, “That’s not a real place.” 

 

She’s checked before, offhand and casually and then less so. There’s no place called Storybrooke, just like there’s no mayor called Regina Mills. She spent her life retreating into some weird…coping mechanism, she’s always figured. The coping mechanism that eventually screwed her up so much by being so  _ real  _ that she couldn’t even read the parts where she’d somehow given her fictional counterpart her baby.

 

Oh, god, that baby was… “It’s a real place,” Henry says assuredly. “I’ve lived there my whole life. I can give you directions.” He props up his book– his  _ book _ , an identical one to her own with his name on it, what the fuck– and leans back against the chair. “Why? Have you heard of it?”

 

Emma doesn’t answer. Instead, she says, “What’s that book about?” 

 

Henry wrinkles his nose. “I don’t think you’re ready for it yet.” There’s a smile to his eyes, smug and a little mischievous, that reminds her of…

 

_ God _ . She isn’t thinking about any of this, and what might await her at the end of this trip. She can barely process this kid being  _ hers _ , that little boy she’d given up all grown up and looking for answers. She wasn’t cut out to be a mom then, and she isn’t cut out to be one now, and she should escape as quickly as she can before Henry starts getting ideas. “Listen, kid, just give me your mom’s phone number so we can let her know you’re okay.” 

 

“She’s not my mom,” Henry says stubbornly. “You are.” 

 

Emma squints at him, struggling to put the pieces together to understand what is motivating the kid to run off and find her. “You just found out you were adopted, huh?” Henry shrugs sullenly. Emma reaches out, unconsciously drawn to him, and withdraws her hand before she can touch his shoulder. 

 

She falls silent again, focusing on the road ahead of her instead of the boy beside her. Somewhere below that seat is her  _ book _ , is an answer, is something that might finally make tonight make sense. But she can’t take it out and check, so instead–

 

They pull into Storybrooke after hours of near-silence, and it’s unchanged in the decade since she’d last seen it on the pages of her book. She’s seen the sign before, seen the winding road to out of town and Granny’s and Mr. Gold’s pawn shop, each storefront so familiar that she’s rocked by it. They pause to pull over and get an address from–  _ Archie _ , Jiminy Cricket if the curse is really–

 

And it all leads to standing in front of a house she could have drawn in her sleep, waiting as the door flies open and Regina throws her arms around Henry. Emma gapes. 

 

Pictures haven’t done Regina justice, have given her a sort of magnitude that she lacks when she’s bent over Henry like this, just a tearful mother and her son. Emma is without words, without any tools to deal with this moment sprung upon her, and she can only stare with her mouth hanging open as Henry snaps out, “I found my  _ real  _ mom!” and dashes past Regina into the house.

 

Regina breathes in, slow and careful, and she doesn’t look up at Emma until she’s standing again. When she does, it’s with dark eyes still glittering with unshed tears; and in real life, she’s still the most beautiful woman that Emma’s ever seen. “You’re Henry’s birth mother,” she says, and it isn’t a question. It doesn’t come with incredulity, only resignation and a note to her voice that Emma can’t decipher.

 

After all, she’s never heard Regina speak before.

 

“Hi,” she says, struggling to keep her tone calm, but the crack in her voice has already said too much.

 

* * *

 

_ The Enemy _ . Emma Swan stands in her foyer, dazed and uncertain as she reaches for the glass Regina offers her, and something electric passes between them as their fingers brush. Emma startles in place, alarm breaking through the uncertainty like a burst of sun in grey fog, and the drink sloshes over the side of her glass and onto the floor. 

 

Emma’s eyes widen in horror and a dozen memories of furious foster parents flash through Regina’s mind at once.  _ The Enemy. The Enemy _ , she reminds herself, and her eyes harden and turn plastic-false. “I’ll get that. Why don’t you have a seat in my study?” 

 

The Emma she remembers would have stumbled through a response, anxious and too apologetic. This one gives away so little that Regina longs to seize the book from where she’d left it in her room and study the past ten years, take them apart piece by piece until she understands the guarded smile and the opaque, “Thank you,” that belies only nervousness and nothing deeper.

 

She returns to the kitchen, pours another drink from the decanter, and rests her head against the side of the fridge door, her heart still pounding. This is…too much, Henry missing and then  _ I found my real mom! _ , and now Emma Swan in the next room after years spent casting thoughts of her aside. She isn’t equipped for any of this, let alone all at once. 

 

“So you're pretty fucked up over this, too, huh,” comes a dry voice from behind her, and Regina’s glass shatters onto the floor. Emma looks chagrined. “Oh, god. I’m sorry. I keep–  _ breaking things _ ,” she says, and she looks as angry about it as Regina is,  _ The Enemy, god _ . “Let me just–“ She finds the broom in record time, and Regina can only stare in silence as Emma sweeps in too-long strokes and sends the glass flying.

 

“I’m–“ Emma pinches the bridge of her nose. “Look, I’m sorry. This is…not an ideal situation.” 

 

Regina laughs and then pauses, startled that she’s still capable of it. “That’s putting it lightly.” Emma grins and looks only slightly abashed. God, she’s…a completely different person now, but there are still the same tells that Regina can recognize on her face, the same relief beneath the surface. “Tell me, did Henry eat any dinner with you?”

 

Emma winces. “No. I…I’m not really good with kids,” she says helplessly. “I didn’t think about–“ 

 

“It’s been a rough night,” Regina is saying before she can think about what she’s doing, soothing  _ The Enemy _ . “I had…I made a casserole and left it in the oven. I don’t think we can break  _ that _ .” It’s Emma’s turn to laugh, shaky and with her eyes still fixed on Regina with unsettling focus. “I’ll be right back.” 

 

Henry is pretending to sleep when she opens his door, an unmoving lump beneath his comforter with the telltale edge of his book poking out beneath it. Regina says, her voice strained, “ _ Henry _ ,” and gets nothing but silence as she sets a plate down at his desk.

 

She closes the door and ducks into her own room, flipping blankly through pages of a book she’d all but abandoned. Emma’s face is on every page, aging and growing harder and darker, and Regina drinks it all in with desperation until she reads the final page and sees herself. Their hands are brushing as the glass passes from Regina to Emma, and Regina swallows and shuts the book again. 

 

She returns downstairs and finds Emma eyeing the casserole with the sort of longing Regina’s only ever seen on her face around Henry in the hospital. “These always looked so good,” she remarks, and then bites her lip. “I mean, in….cookbooks. I’ve always been more of a mac-and-cheese kind of girl.” 

 

“All my casseroles were a nightmare until Henry was old enough to notice,” Regina says ruefully, remembering scrunched-up faces and tantrums from both of them. “Eventually, I learned that the trick was lots of cheese to mask the taste of the vegetables. Then  _ that  _ meant too many stomachaches, and I…got better, after a while.” She spoons some out for Emma and then for herself, sitting down at the edge of her seat with her spine straight. 

 

There had been too many times, after she’d conceded that she  _ had  _ been invested in Emma and there’d been nothing to do about it, when she’d wanted to do everything in her power to offer her a warm meal and a safe place to eat it. Now, this is  _ wrong  _ and  _ dangerous  _ and she’s dancing on a line so fine it’s only a matter of time before she slips. 

 

Emma finishes her portion in bare minutes and says, “I figured he just…figured out about me.” She winces again. “How did he find me?” 

 

Foregoing the alcohol had been a terrible idea. "No idea. When I adopted him, he was only three weeks old. Records were sealed. I was told the birth mother didn’t want to have any contact.” When she’d adopted him, it had been with marked relief at Emma’s decision to make it a closed adoption. She’d  _ known _ , somehow, from the moment that Emma had seen that positive pregnancy test. She’d known she’d do anything in her power to keep that child safe. But she hadn’t been ready then to see Emma.

 

She isn’t ready now, either. "You were told right.” Emma stares at her plate. Regina gets the decanter out again. 

 

“And the father?” 

 

“There was one.”

 

“Do I need to be worried about him?” 

 

“Nope. He doesn’t even know.” 

 

_ Good _ , Regina thinks. Good that Neal is long gone from Emma’s life, regardless of where they’re positioned now. “Do I need to be worried about you, Miss Swan?” 

 

Emma’s fingers drum against the table, silent but distracting, and Regina watches Emma’s face instead. “Absolutely not,” she says, and Regina can read a lie as well as Emma used to insist that she could. 

 

They make stilted small talk about Henry after that, and Regina confesses too much and nothing at all–  _ I don’t think that makes me evil, do you?  _ she asks about being strict with Henry, and Emma looks at her askance and doesn’t respond– and it’s strange. It’s dizzying and terrifying and there’s a connection that Regina can’t shrug, and she breathes in with marked regret when Emma says that it’s time for her to go.

 

_ The Enemy  _ is leaving. And Regina can only watch her drive off from her window, bereft, until she sits down to catch up on ten years of Emma Swan.

 

And within the book, she finds one terrible truth, repeated time and again, that changes everything about Emma Swan. 

 

_ Do I need to be worried about you, Miss Swan?  _ No, she’d thought. For all the tension between them, she knows what makes Emma tick and she knows that Emma will leave. But she hadn’t known then that–

 

Emma had wanted to keep Henry. Emma still drinks herself into a stupor on Henry’s birthday every year. Emma has worked bail bonds cases where the family left behind contains little boys just Henry’s age at the time too often for it to be mere coincidence.  

 

Emma may have agreed to a closed adoption, but she’d spent every day since regretting it. And Regina can handle Emma-the-Savior, Emma who might break the curse. 

 

Emma who might break Regina and Henry is someone else entirely.

 

* * *

 

Emma wakes up in a jail cell in Storybrooke with a story that sounds fake even to her, and she resigns herself to the fact that she isn’t getting out of town so quickly. 

 

Which is…not the worst thing in the world, she thinks. Last night had been awkward and tense but Regina had  _ laughed  _ once, and she could get used to this town, the boy who’d asked her question after question in the car and the mother who’s every bit as intoxicating in person as Emma had imagined she’d be. She doesn’t know how far she’d have made it out of town, anyway, not without coming back time and again.

 

And Regina is back in the sheriff's station the next morning, frantically searching for Henry and looking far more hostile about seeing her today. “Honey, I haven’t seen him since I dropped him at your house. And, I have a pretty good alibi,” Emma says, motioning at the bars around her. 

 

Regina just scowls at her, but doesn’t challenge her point. “He wasn’t in his room this morning,” she says, turning back to the sheriff. “I don’t know where else to look.” 

 

And Emma finds herself saying, “I find people for a living. Let me help you.” 

 

Regina’s eyes are dark and pained, and Emma doesn’t know what’s gone so wrong in one night– how they’d gone from awkward casserole to Regina looking at her as though she loathes her– unless she knows about the savior, unless the curse is real and she knows that Emma’s her enemy, unless–

 

“Please,” Regina says stiffly. “I need to find him.” But she turns away and doesn’t meet Emma’s eye again as they troop out to check out Henry’s computer. Sheriff Graham hovers at Regina’s shoulder and Emma hates it, hates him, hates everything he represents that she’s read about. 

 

Regina shrugs him off and Emma makes small talk with him, feeling eyes burning into her back. It’s amazing how, after twenty-eight years with only a fictional form of Regina with her, she’s been one day in the deep end and she already can’t breathe.

 

And then she finds out that the credit card that Henry had used to find her had been Mary Margaret Blanchard’s, and she can’t breathe for all new reasons. 

 

“Well?” Regina says impatiently. “Are you coming or not?” She veers between outright hostility and a desire to be in Emma’s presence as acutely as Emma desires to be in hers, and Emma reacts to each accordingly each time. Now it’s her, following after Regina like an obedient puppy as Graham is dismissed, and she settles into Regina's car and forces her jumpy knees to still.

 

Regina doesn’t look at her. “What’s wrong?” she demands, and Emma forces herself to stay still and shrug, nausea bubbling up in her stomach. Regina blinks at her as though she can see straight through her, and Emma sucks in a stinging breath and looks out the window instead.

 

She follows Regina from the car and into the elementary school, Regina pushing open doors and striding through the halls, and when Mary Margaret Blanchard looks up curiously at them, Emma vomits onto the floor. 

 

It’s so quick and unexpected that one moment, Emma’s trailing behind Regina with her face set; and the next, Mary Margaret is making a worried sound and calling in the custodian as she puts a hand on Emma’s back. “Are you alright? I’m so sorry. You aren’t allergic to birds, are you…I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met?” 

 

Emma dry-heaves, desperate to throw up again or do  _ something  _ to assuage the nausea, and another hand bats away Mary Margaret’s, runs down her back almost soothingly until Regina’s voice sounds, fierce and unyielding. “My son is missing, Miss Swan. Pull yourself together.” Maybe it’s just years of motherhood that keep her hand soft but firm against Emma’s back. Maybe it’s unspoken guilt for something too absurd to name. Her expression gives nothing away but uncompromising  _ demand  _ for Emma to control herself, and Emma swallows water that Mary Margaret hands her and blinks away wetness in her eyes.

 

“Yeah. I’m sorry,” she says, staring down at the puddle of vomit. “I…must have eaten something bad.” 

 

“Impossible,” Regina grumbles, defending the honor of her casserole. 

 

Emma finds her grounding in the moment, a half-smirk the best that she can do. “I don’t know,” she says casually. “I think I’d probably be tempted to poison my son’s…my son’s…” The casualness is gone. “…if she came to town, too.” 

 

There’s a flicker of recognition on Regina’s face, a sudden uncertainty as though she’s set off-balance by it. “You spilled the poisoned glass,” she says, and there’s a glimmer of amusement in her eye that could mean she’s kidding or… _ not _ . Emma gulps.

 

Mary Margaret says, “You’re Henry’s mother?” 

 

A thunderous cloud descends over Regina’s face. Emma jerks her thumb at her. “She’s Henry’s mother. I just…” 

 

“She’s the woman who gave birth to him,” Regina cuts in, and Emma sags with relief.

 

Mary Margaret keeps  _ smiling  _ at her, and Emma can’t take it, not even when Mary Margaret and Regina begin to squabble over the credit card and the book that Mary Margaret had given Henry. “It’s only a book of fairytales,” Mary Margaret says vaguely. “The hero of the story reminded me of Henry. He’s grappling with quite a bit right now–“ 

 

“And you thought the best way to handle that was to encourage him to run away from home?” Regina demands. “Have you even read that book?” 

 

“Have you?” Emma says, enormously interested in the answer. 

 

Regina scoffs and says, “This is a waste of time,” and storms off, which is answer enough. 

 

And then it’s just Emma and Mary Margaret in the room– Mary Margaret who, if her book is telling the truth, is the woman who’d abandoned her in a tree twenty-eight years ago. Mary Margaret who, if her book is telling the truth, is her  _ mother _ – Mary Margaret who has the nerve to talk to her about how Henry is grappling with questions about why  _ Emma  _ gave him up and Emma can’t even be angry, just drained.

 

Mary Margaret tells Emma where to find Henry, though, and that’s all that matters.

  
  


Regina takes the day off to find Henry and spends the bulk of it poring over Emma’s book some more instead. Mary Margaret sends Emma to Henry, the treacherous–

 

She clenches her fist and then lets it fall, remembering instead Emma’s face when she’d first seen Mary Margaret. What does Emma know? The book has never alluded to Emma’s book. Regina only knows about it from that day at the park, eighteen years ago. She’d thought she might have only imagined it, or it had been a mirage somehow, but the episode today in the classroom had indicated that it may be very real.

 

In that case, what does Emma know about the curse? What does Emma know about  _ Regina _ ? She bites back nausea at the contemplation, at whatever it can be that Regina’s been depicted as in Emma’s book. Regina might have been keeping Emma alive on the streets of Minnesota while Emma had been reading about the  _ Evil Queen _ , and the thought of it burns in her throat in humiliated despair.

 

_ No _ . Emma hadn’t looked at her like the villain. Emma had been tense and awkward the night before, but she hadn’t been afraid. 

 

Regina shakes her head, determined to snap out of this.  _ Emma  _ is the villain here, come to sweep away her son and her curse. Not Regina. Regina  _ won _ . 

 

“ _ You don’t have to be guilty. I know you like me,” Henry said, leaning against the wall of his broken-down castle. “I can tell. You’re just pushing me away because I make you feel guilty. It’s okay. I know why you gave me away. You wanted to give me my best chance.” _

 

Regina glares at the book, at how  _ charitable  _ he is with Emma when he won’t bother to give her the same benefit of the doubt, and then he says, “ _ Because it’s the same reason Snow White gave you away _ ,” and Emma snaps as Regina recoils.

 

She tells him too much at once, talks about her childhood and living without being wanted and  _ “I never had a mother! What I wanted for you was that you’d be– that you’d be loved, and you are.”  _ A picture comes into focus on the page, Emma nearly in tears but her eyes so earnest that Regina can’t resolve them with the Emma who wishes desperately that she’d kept Henry.  _ “If you really have some book that tells you all of this– didn’t it tell you about how much your mom loves you?” _

 

Henry makes sulky remarks but they depart the castle, and Regina shuts her book and goes to the mirror to wipe off her face and fix her makeup. She doesn’t recognize the face in the mirror, like a mask of Mayor Mills, and she sneers and vamps at the mirror and can’t find the Evil Queen in her eyes, either. Somehow, Henry still can.

 

Henry runs past her into the house and Regina catches his arm, halts his retreat and catches his gaze, and Henry looks at her as though she’s a stranger. “Henry,” she says, and it’s harsher than she’d meant for it to be, abrupt when she’s only struggling to reach him.

 

He stares back at her silently and she doesn’t know what else she can demand from him when Emma’s hovering at the door. She drops her hand and he shoves past her, up the stairs to kick off his shoes and slam his bedroom door. Emma says, “He’ll come around,” and it’s so quietly certain that it infuriates Regina even more.

 

“You hardly know him,” Regina snaps. “Do you think one heart-to-heart at his castle gives you special insight into my son?” Emma looks startled.  _ Good _ . “If you think you can…swoop into his life and reclaim him, I swear to you, I will make you wish you’d never been born.” 

 

“I haven’t–“ Emma’s always chosen anger when any sensible person would choose fear. “What the hell? I’ve brought him back to you twice now!” 

 

“Do you want a medal for it?” Regina snaps. “You come into our lives– you  _ encourage  _ Henry in this madness and you drive wedges between us–“ 

 

“With all due respect,” Emma says tersely, “I didn’t have to drive any of those wedges.” 

 

Regina wants to slap her, to scratch open her face and watch rivulets of blood slide down that pale skin. Regina wants to cast aside years of caring too much for Emma Swan and eradicate her from this world without a second thought. Regina wants–

 

Emma’s fists are clenched and she looks so young, so defensive, and Regina wants so much that Emma will only take away from her. “I shouldn’t have said that,” Emma says, sagging. “It’s been a long twenty-four hours.” She bites her lip, uncertain as she glances up at Regina through her eyelashes. “I don’t think this is on you. Really.”

 

“Of course it isn’t,” Regina snaps. “How dare you–“  

 

“I don’t. I know you’re a good mom,” Emma says swiftly. “I know you. I know you.” 

 

It’s a bold statement, and Regina quirks her eyebrows, unimpressed by it. “I think you’ll find that you know very little about me, if you think I’ll let you get out your…tired regrets about my son by invading our lives. Miss Swan, you made a decision ten years ago. And in the last decade, while you’ve been–” She scowls, cutting off that train of thought before she loses another day in the book. “Well, who knows what you’ve been doing– I’ve changed every diaper, soothed every fever, endured every tantrum. You may have given birth to him, but he is my son.” 

 

It’s ferocious, protective, Regina enunciating every word with extra poison in it at the threat to Henry, and Emma takes a step back. “I wasn’t–“ 

 

“No!” Regina snarls. “You don’t get to speak. You don’t get to do anything. You gave up that right when you tossed him away.” Emma recoils, stricken, and Regina presses forward. “Do you know what a closed adoption is? It’s what you asked for. You have no legal right to Henry and you’re going to be held to that.”

 

She moves forward, Emma backed up against one of the porch pillars as her face hardens, and Regina is close enough that she can feel her warm breath against her lips. “So I suggest you get in your car, and you leave this town,” she grinds out. “Because if you don’t, I will destroy you if it is the last thing I do.” Emma stands straight, shoulders locked together, and doesn’t say a word.

 

Regina turns on her heel, almost disappointed at the lack of fight, and stalks back to the doorway. “Goodbye, Miss Swan.” 

 

And then Emma's voice, cracking on its first syllable as she says, “And you love him.” It’s a statement in need of validation, obnoxious and intrusive, and if Regina hadn’t seen the picture of Emma with sincerity in her eyes, she would have been even more enraged. 

 

Instead, she’s stymied. “I…of course I love him,” she says curtly. Emma stands there silently, waiting for something more, and Regina has nothing else to say. She slams the door and retreats upstairs, reading with muted, frustrated resignation as Emma books a room at Granny’s.

  
The town clock, ensconced in its tower, ticks for the first time in twenty-eight years.


	4. Chapter 4

Emma rereads the conversation she’d had with Regina dozens of times over the next few days, struggling to understand where they’d gone so  _ wrong  _ so quickly. Sure, she’d always known that Regina’s a tough cookie, but so is she– she’d  _ thought _ . In her idle fantasies, she’d imagined the two of them butting heads and then reaching a grudging respect for each other; but so far, the whole  _ grudging respect  _ bit seems very, very distant.

 

There’s the incident when Regina bolts her car, and then a blatant attempt to get her  _ arrested _ , and she can’t forget Regina showing up at her door with a basket of apples and a plastic smile on her first morning at Granny’s. Emma had shoved her book under her comforter and forgotten to put on pants, and there had been a moment that Regina’s eyes had dipped down and the plastic smile had faltered. 

 

And okay, Emma isn’t  _ completely  _ blameless.  _ Ugh _ . She may have sliced off a chunk of Regina’s apple tree with a chainsaw just to get a rise out of her; and the rush of Regina snarling up close to her, furious with fire and an odd kind of excitement in her eyes had made it all worth it. She remembers a time when, as a child, she’d been devastated at the thought that she could be Regina’s enemy, when she’d thought that it would break her heart. She hadn’t predicted the thrill of the fire, close enough to burn, and the moment when they lock eyes and Emma can’t breathe but can feel her veins sing with it.

 

Regina gets her kicked out of Granny’s and Emma curls into her car and is grateful for a temperate autumn in Storybrooke. Mary Margaret Blanchard finds her there during the first night, peering at the classifieds with a flashlight in a vain attempt to find somewhere Regina doesn’t control. “Hey, you okay?” she says, and Emma jumps.

 

_ No _ , she isn’t okay, not when her  _ mother  _ is staring at her with so much concern and her throat is tight and she can’t breathe for entirely new reasons. She forces smiles and can’t quite hide the devastation in her eyes. And Mary Margaret, whom she’s only seen through Regina’s eyes until now and hadn’t expected to be so  _ empathetic _ , seems to detect it at once. “You decided to stay,” she says, her smile warm and oh god, this hurts so much more than she’d have ever thought it would. Coming to Storybrooke has been both inevitable and impossible, and Emma can’t answer Mary Margaret.

 

“You know,” Mary Margaret ventures after a truly awkward exchange about her date for the night– he’s not  _ David _ , the man who’d laid Emma into a wardrobe with a stab wound sapping at his life force, and Emma can feel a headache coming on– “If things get…cramped.” She glances at Emma’s car again, instinctive concern for a daughter who is only a stranger. “I do have a spare room.”

 

Emma stares at her, eyes wide and stricken, and she can’t put on masks or pretend right now. She’s carved into with only a few cautious words, devastated and stripped of a dozen layers of shelter that she’s built for herself until now. Mary Margaret is casual, self-conscious but still determined to make her offer, and Emma chokes out a “Thanks,” that sounds so strained it’s almost hostile.

 

Mary Margaret’s eyes flicker with concern. Emma can feel her heart thudding against her ribs, unsteady enough that breathing burns as much as her eyes do. “I’m...not really the roommate type,” she says, forcing a smile. 

 

Mary Margaret nods slowly, her eyes boring into Emma, and Emma stumbles forward. “It’s just not my thing,” she says lamely, and she chokes on her words and manages, a hitch in her voice, “I do better on my own.” Mary Margaret is still nodding, just as uncomfortable as Emma is (no, not  _ just _ , she couldn’t possibly know... _ fuck, fuck all of this _ –), and Emma blinks too many times and takes in a shuddering breath. 

 

“Well,” Mary Margaret says finally, “Good night. Good luck with Henry,” and she brightens, as though they’ve found the thing that unites them, a woman desperate to know her birth child. As though–

 

Emma can barely manage a “Yeah,” before she watches Mary Margaret leave with blurred eyes and feels helplessly, helplessly alone.

 

And she does something magnificently stupid, of course, because who is she if not the queen of bad decisions? She needs a  _ distraction _ , something comfortable and safe, and there’s nothing in this world that is comfortable or safe aside from her only companion through twenty-eight years of loneliness. 

 

She flips through the book but it isn’t  _ enough _ , not when there’s a real live Regina just a few blocks away, and she sighs in surrender and turns to the last page with writing on it. Regina is at Storybrooke’s more upscale bar– which should be closed by now, but no one refuses the mayor– and Emma shuts the book and shoves it under her seat, yanking on her jacket and heading up the street with too-quick steps and still-ragged breath. 

 

Regina doesn’t notice her until Emma’s sliding into place beside her. “I thought your cider was better than anything they serve here,” Emma says, and Regina scowls at her. 

 

“They’re closed,” she informs Emma. The bar is empty, in fact, and Emma makes a face and moves around the bar to fix her own drink. “I could have the sheriff arrest you for trespassing.” 

 

“Can we not talk about the sheriff right now?” Emma says tiredly, dropping some bills on the counter. “I didn’t come here to… I don’t want to fight right now, okay?” 

 

“I don’t want you in my town right now, but I don’t get an option in that, do I?” Regina retorts, though her voice lacks the conviction she musters up at the best of times. For all Regina’s scheming and grandstanding, the book hasn’t delved into her rage toward Emma all that much. There’s a lot of fear, a lot of irritation, and yet it’s all...so much more muted than Emma would have expected. Emma doesn’t understand why Regina wouldn’t despise her, but this moment is…

 

Regina is watching her out of the corner of her eye, wrists resting against the table as Emma mixes her drink. “You’ve done this before.” 

 

“I dated a guy who had a bar in his basement once.” Emma shrugs. “He also had body parts in his freezer, but he was good for a drink or two. I made do for a while.” Regina squints at her, remarkably unruffled by this revelation.  _ Right. Inter-realm despot.  _ Body parts in a freezer wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for her, Emma guesses. “You want anything?” 

 

“Are you really going to ask me that,” Regina says, her voice dry. Emma rolls her eyes and pours her a bourbon, neat, and delights in the way Regina’s eyes narrow at her usual choice. She takes the drink, scowling, and says, “Why are you here? Did Mary Margaret clear out all her alcohol before she invited you in?” 

 

Emma looks at her askance. “How do you  _ know  _ about that? Did you plant a bug on me? Do you have Sidney  _ stalking  _ me?” 

 

“How did you know I was here?” Regina counters, and they stare at each other in stubborn reticence. 

 

There’s a long silence, Emma leaning onto the counter beside Regina as she drinks and Regina with an elbow resting against the counter and her drink in her hand as she watches Emma. It’s oddly comfortable, even with the animosity that simmers between them, and Emma can feel her heart rate slowing down again to normal levels in Regina’s presence.

 

And then Regina says, her eyes still on Emma, “Henry thinks there’s a curse on this town.” She barks out a laugh. “And that I’m the Evil Queen who cast it.” 

 

Emma sucks in a breath, feeling as though she’s being tested by Regina’s casual revelation. As though Regina’s studying her to know what she knows, what Henry’s said or why she might really be in this town. She can laugh, too, feign bewilderment or seek to shrug it off, but instead she says, “What are you going to do?”

 

Regina blinks at her, startled, and hesitates. “What am I going to do about my son believing these...these lies about me?” she says, her voice brittle and thin. Emma aches, just a bit, and watches Regina’s eyes as they cloud up with regret and defiance at once. “You’re the one he wants. Why don’t you tell me?” 

 

Emma bites her lip. “Regina–” It’s different, seeing her as a person instead of only a story. She fluctuates more, says more with every twitch of her face than she ever had in sketchy drawings. Her shoulders sink and rise, caught between despair and determination, and Emma is entranced in her presence, helplessly drawn to her, for better or for worse. “Henry can believe whatever he wants to, but none of it changes the fact that you’re his mom. And he’ll understand that eventually. I’m not...I’m no mom, and he’ll understand  _ that _ , too.” 

 

“You wanted to be,” Regina says coolly, and the same fear is back in her gaze. “You wanted to keep him.” 

 

“No,” Emma says hastily. “No, of course not. I knew you were his best chance.” She’d drowned in dreams, in regrets, in moments of certainty that she  _ could have  _ done it, if she’d only pushed herself a little harder and taken chances and–

 

But she’d known all along that she’d have only screwed him up more if she’d tried. 

 

Regina is staring at her again, an unpleasant look on her face, and she spits out, “You’re lying,” with so much disdain in her voice that Emma wants to tear out her book and demand,  _ Who’s the liar now? _

 

Instead she shakes her head and gulps down her whiskey, and Regina keeps glaring at her until Emma thinks it isn’t just disdain in her eyes but something raw and wanting. Something deep within Emma responds to it, yearns for it, and she sucks in a breath and says, “I never came here of my own will. I never tried to find him. He had to come to Boston and haul me here. I didn’t want to–” The words catch in her throat and she can’t say it, can’t vocalize  _ I didn’t want to keep him  _ even if it’s all Regina wants to hear.

 

Regina is still glaring at her, still furious at what she perceives is a lie, and Emma finally spits out, “He’s amazing. Of course I wanted to...but I couldn’t, okay? I couldn’t. And you did what I couldn’t.” She slams her glass down, too hard, and storms for the door, afraid of what more she might say.

 

Regina says, “Emma,” and Emma halts at the door, waiting. Regina hasn’t turned around, still nursing the glass at the bar, but she says, her words careful and her tone neutral, “Why did you stay with a boyfriend who kept body parts in his freezer?”

 

“I was exaggerating,” Emma says, exhaling. “I mean, there was an ear in there. It was supposed to be...artsy or something. He liked to take it out and show guests.” Regina doesn’t respond, still waiting for a response, and Emma shifts from foot to foot and mutters, “I don’t know. That was still when I cared about...having a place to go home to, I guess. I could have done much worse than that.” She  _ had _ , but she isn’t offering anything else to a woman who would carelessly use it all against her. 

 

Regina says, voice dry but for a twinge of something Emma can’t identify, “True. You could have been shacking up with Mary Margaret Blanchard,” and Emma laughs despite herself, ducks out of the bar as the laugh is twisted into a choked sob and she stumbles back to her car for the remainder of the night.

 

* * *

 

A kind of peace settles over them after that– a very, very brief one, highlighted only by Regina spotting Henry sneaking out of her room with one of her dresses. As entertaining as it might be to contemplate Emma wearing it, she values her clothing too much to let Emma destroy a six-hundred dollar dress by traipsing around that dilapidated castle with it. She retrieves it, says something sharp, and leaves a blouse on her dresser instead. 

 

A part of Regina still dislikes the idea of Emma living in her car, all alone without a home to come back to. Most of Regina’s homes have been prisons, instruments of torture or pain or despair, but they'd still been  _ homes _ , and Emma has so rarely had anything so stable. Another part of Regina reminds her mercilessly that this is  _ necessary _ , that it's the only way that Emma might finally leave. And Emma  _ must _ leave, or she’ll destroy the fragile house of cards that Regina has erected over twenty-eight years of peace. 

 

A part of Regina still dislikes the idea of Emma  _ leaving _ , but Regina swallows it back and turns her attention to Mary Margaret and David and the newest setback to tackle. David wakes up, triggered by Mary Margaret and whatever she’s read from Henry’s book– “I don’t know what’s in there, either,” Emma says, and they share a look of mutual, desperate frustration– and Regina tells Emma to  _ enjoy her shirt, because that’s all you’re getting _ , and then flushes despite herself at what was very nearly  _ flirting _ .

 

God, the very concept of Emma Swan is unbearable, and this adult version of her is even more so. Emma rolls her eyes at Regina and is appalled when Regina justifiably introduces David’s cursed wife to the room, watching Mary Margaret’s dejected face instead of Emma’s fierce glare. “You’re a piece of work,” Emma says when Kathryn has vanished into the room. Mary Margaret is watching her, dejected. “I can’t believe you actually…” She grits her teeth.

 

Regina says pleasantly, “I reunited husband and wife? I know, it’s like a dream.” She beams at Mary Margaret, who manages a wan smile back. Henry is glaring at Regina with the same disbelief as Emma, and it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does to see them like carbon copies disappointed with her. 

 

She sends Henry to the car and whirls around when Emma comes running after her. “You know, you’re not helping with Henry’s little stories when you  _ encourage  _ the fairytale nonsense,” she says sharply, taking the offensive, and Emma just looks at her until she’s ashamed and mutters, “It was bound to happen. As easy as it is to say that I control everything here, I  _ don’t _ .” She hadn’t engineered the ins and outs of the cursed Storybrooke. She hadn’t even given David a  wife.

 

Emma scoffs. “I know,” she says, and Regina can feel a sigh of relief bubbling at just Emma’s irritation with the idea of the curse until Emma says, probing, “But you’re not exactly choked up about it, either, are you?” 

 

Regina is the one to scoff now. “You think I revel in...Mary Margaret being alone in the world, unloved?” 

 

“Damn right I do,” and maybe Emma  _ does  _ know more than she’s letting on. “So she has this...connection with this coma patient–”

 

“Life isn’t a fairytale, Miss Swan,” Regina says sharply. “This is reality. You don’t...fall in love with handsome coma patients and have them fall right back in love with you when they wake up. You don’t show up in town and make friends with your son’s adoptive mother as though any of this is legal. You don’t find a family if you just _want one_ hard enough,” she spits out, and Emma takes a step back, her eyes stricken for a moment before she conceals them again with cold fury. 

 

“You are so much worse than I ever thought you’d be,” she grinds out, and there’s a note of utter disappointment in her voice as she storms away.

 

Regina is moody in the car, Henry scowling out the window while she scowls out the windshield, and both of them are sullen when they make it inside. “You ran off into the woods today to find a potentially dangerous man,” she grinds out at Henry’s sulky responses. “Do you think that you deserve anything less than a grounding?” 

 

“You’re just trying to keep Snow and Charming apart,” Henry says, clutching his book tightly to him. “I know everything. It won’t  _ work _ . None of it will, so you might as well just give up now before–” He freezes, biting down on his lip.

 

Regina’s brow furrows. “Don’t tell me your book can tell the future now,” she says, and Henry presses his lips together and runs upstairs. “Henry!” she calls after him, following him up the stairs. “Henry, stop this!” He’s always been well-behaved, mischievous and too smart for his own good but obedient and happy, and Regina doesn’t know how to cope with this new, hostile rift between them.

 

Her only mode of action when she’d been queen had been to wreak fear into her subjects’ hearts. But never Henry. She’d made a vow from the moment she’d first held him,  _ my son will never fear me _ . She’s known enough fear of a mother to last them both a lifetime. 

 

“Give me the book,” she orders when she pulls Henry’s door open. 

 

He looks up at her, his eyes defiant. “Why? Afraid of what I might see in it?” He hugs it tighter to himself. “I know everything, Mom.” 

 

“It’s a fairytale,” Regina retorts, still uncertain as to the content but certain enough that it’s some vile portrayal of her. “Whatever you see in there...whatever it says...it’s not  _ real. _ ” It’s a desperate lie, a final attempt to bridge the gap between them, and she’s never before regretted any of her past as much as she does now, laid before a ten-year-old in judgment.

 

A ten-year-old who glares at her and says, “I know it’s real. You’re a liar. You’re  _ evil _ .” She rears back, a wounded creature cornered with no one to strike out at, and Henry’s eyes narrow. “You cast the curse. You lied to me about my real mom. You’re going to...to poison…” He tears the book open, and Regina cranes her neck to see a photo coming to focus on the page. It’s Regina herself, but not in Henry’s room struggling to see the page. No, it’s Regina in her kitchen handing a container to Emma Swan, something dark and menacing in her eyes. 

 

“What the hell is that?” Regina demands, and Henry snaps the book shut, his eyes fearful. “Henry, is that book telling you the  _ future _ ?” She catches herself, focuses on the issue at hand. “It’s obviously not true. It’s designed to– to turn you against me–” 

 

“It’s  _ right _ ,” Henry snarls, desperate and wild-eyed and angry. “It’s real and I’ll prove it. You’ll see.” He yanks his blanket over himself and rolls onto his side, the conversation over. 

 

Regina reminds herself again–  _ never fear me, never fear me _ – and gathers immeasurable patience instead of rage. She walks to the bed, watching Henry’s shoulders tense as she nears, and she struggles for one last moment with another sharp retort and suppresses it. Instead, she leans down and brushes a kiss to Henry’s temple, tugging at the jacket he’s still wearing. “Into pajamas,” she reminds him, and Henry stiffens even more. “Sleep well, my little–”  _ My little prince,  _ she’d called him when he’d been a child, and he’d beamed and ridden on stuffed horses and pretended to fight dragons. Today, even the hint of it has them both tense and receding, and Henry rolls over and stares at her with hollow eyes that are close to tears. “Sleep well, Henry,” she says finally, and escapes the room before she can say another word to ruin them.

 

It’s that book. It’s Henry’s book, whatever it’s telling him, and it’s different than her own. She remembers for a moment: a park in Boston, a ten-year-old girl with her arms wrapped around a matching book as she stares at Regina with curiosity. What is in Emma’s book? What does Emma know? 

 

But there are no answers to come, not in the morning when Regina sees Emma at Granny’s. Graham is leaning over the chair of the booth to talk to her. It’s flirty banter, she can see from her vantage point across the diner, Graham laughing and Emma with her eyebrows raised as she smirks at him, and Regina can feel hot desperation bubbling up within her. It only gets stronger when Emma turns, as though caught by Regina’s glare, and sees her across the room. 

 

Emma grimaces at her, still stone-faced around her and the quiet camaraderie gone, and Regina feels it as sharply as she had Henry’s shoulders stiffening as she’d approached. She stands, stalking toward them, and Emma’s eyes darken and darken as Regina nears. But Regina doesn’t talk to Emma. She mutters a cool missive to Graham and he follows her from the diner, his shoulders drooping as Emma watches Regina with eyes like fire.

 

_ Good _ .

 

* * *

 

Graham offers Emma an interim job, and she takes it without a second thought, even if it is Graham. She isn’t staying, not for long, but for the next week or two...this is where she has to be, for all Regina’s snide comments about family and belonging. Henry is here. Mary Margaret is here. Regina is... _ Regina _ , whatever that might mean in the long run.

 

Today it means the door of the station being flung open by what seems like sheer willpower and Regina stalking in. “Graham! Graham–  _ You _ ,” she says, her voice lowering to a growl. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

 

“I’m your town’s new deputy,” Emma drawls, surreptitiously sliding her bear claw under a pile of paperwork. Regina doesn’t even look at her hand, focused as she is on Emma’s face with burning intensity. “What can I do for you, Madam Mayor?” 

 

“Spare me the snappy back-and-forth,  _ Deputy _ ,” Regina says, her lip curling, and Emma’s disappointed. She’d expected a war over her appointment– at least some drama between Regina and her flunky– and Regina won’t even give her her fun. How very– “Henry’s missing,” Regina bites out, and Emma winces, her scheming forgotten. 

 

She jumps up as Regina sinks down, her fingers pressed to her temple. “Again?” She doesn’t mean to sound judgmental, but Regina flinches anyway. “I mean...was he always like this?” 

 

Regina looks at her disbelievingly. “Of course not,” Emma says hastily. “I know that.” Henry and Regina had been almost codependently attached until he’d hit adolescence, at which point years of Regina fostering trust and freedom in him had backfired catastrophically. “Any ideas?” 

 

“Do you think I’d be coming to this pit of incompetence if I had any ideas?” Regina barks out.

 

Emma rolls her eyes at her. “Far be it from me to speculate on why you’d ever come to the sheriff for anything,” she mutters, and Regina says, “ _ What _ ?” and Emma clears her throat and says, “Well, you were the last one to see Henry, right? What did you talk about?” 

 

Regina’s jaw sets. “Nothing.” 

 

“Regina,” Emma sighs, sitting back down in Graham’s chair, and Regina sighs, too, and bends.

 

“The curse,” she murmurs. “The one he’s...the one he’s so sure exists. He promised he was going to prove it’s real.” 

 

Emma chews contemplatively on her lip. Regina will do anything she can to keep Henry in the dark, and Henry will do anything he can to find out  _ everything.  _ And if nothing else, Regina has instilled her formidable stubbornness in her son. ( _ Their son _ , she thinks wistfully for a moment, and nearly chokes on it.)

 

But Henry isn’t the only one seeking validation of whatever he’s read in his book, and Emma knows how to think like him already. “The mines,” she says immediately. “There was an explosion at the old mines last night.” It had been just after Graham had offered her a badge, her first emergency situation in town. “Ruby was there when it happened. If she saw Henry this morning before school, she might’ve mentioned something to him.” 

 

“He’d take it as a sign that the curse was beginning to fracture and run off to investigate,” Regina says grimly. Sometimes it’s difficult to look at Regina and really believe that the book is accurate. Sometimes– like now, Regina’s brow furrowed and her lips pressed together– it’s all too easy. “Let’s  _ go _ .” 

 

Graham is out on patrol, and Emma drops him a voicemail and hurries to her own car, Regina right behind her. The ground shakes again as it had last night when the mines had collapsed, and Regina’s lips thin even more. “ _ Hurry _ , Deputy–” 

 

She stops, her eyes fixing on something inside the Bug, and Emma hisses out a curse under her breath. It’s her book on the passenger seat, the  _ Regina  _ on the title thankfully facing down where Regina can’t see it. “Henry...loaned it to me,” Emma says quickly, yanking the passenger door open and shoving the book onto the backseat.

 

“I’d like to see it,” Regina says, her eyes narrowed into slits. 

 

“Is now really the time, Regina?” She means to sound incredulous but it’s shaky instead, defensive, and she takes off in a rush to the mines and runs a stop sign. The ground shakes beneath the car, and Regina jerks and nearly slams into her side.

 

Emma puts a hand on her arm to steady her and accelerates, swinging around a corner and down the road until they’re careening toward the mine site. Graham is already there, as are emergency services and too many townspeople– and a familiar backpack, hanging loosely from Ruby’s hand. 

 

Regina freezes, stiff in Emma’s grasp, and Marco and Graham are arguing about something at the base of one of the tunnel entrances. Pongo is running free, barking at an air shaft, and Emma can feel the raw fear creeping through her, threatening to overwhelm.  _ Not Henry. Not when she’d just… _

 

But they can do this. They set off explosives that open a hole to the underground near Pongo’s spot, and it seems to have only made things worse. Regina is shaking with helpless fury, snapping out orders at all of them as Graham looks to Emma for advice, and Emma finds a harness in the patrol car. “Lower me down,” Regina says, eyeing the opening where Henry must be. 

 

“Oh, no way,” Emma says immediately, and the fear that suffuses her at the idea of– of both Regina and Henry, trapped alone belowground, is… “I’m going,” she says, pushing aside the dread. 

 

“He’s my son!” Regina snaps, still helpless, still furious, and Emma almost responds  _ he’s my son, too,  _ except she’s read through ten years of his life and god, no, he isn’t, no matter how much that knowledge burns.

 

They’re standing too close, Graham shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably as they brush past him to glare at each other, and Emma can see very little in the world right now beyond Regina’s frantic face. “You’ve been sitting behind a desk for ten years,” she murmurs. “I can do this.” 

 

Regina’s face sets, and she takes another step forward, her eyes fixed on Emma’s face. Emma swallows, watching Regina’s eyes shift to her lips, and she can’t quite find the promise that she wants to make right now. They’re inches apart, Regina losing every last vestige of hardness and remaining only a desperate mother with faith in her eyes, and when she says, “Just bring him to me,” it’s as potent as a kiss.

 

Emma smiles, small and reassuring, and lets Graham and Marco help her with the harness. She turns back for only a moment, catching Regina’s eye for another quick smile, and Regina wrings her hands and doesn’t smile back.

 

And then there’s nothing but blackness and dust for a long moment, descending deep into the earth, and Emma shines her flashlight around and calls, “Henry? Henry!” 

 

She catches a sneaker on her second sweep, trapped under a large chunk of rock. “Henry!” she shouts again, and the sneaker twitches. 

 

“Emma?” Henry sits up, pushing at the rock, and Emma runs down the passageway to him, lifting the rock and hoisting him up. “It’s okay,” he says, moving his leg. “I think it’s fine.” 

 

“It’s  _ fine _ ?” she repeats, her voice high, and Henry looks at her and says her name sheepishly. “Henry, what the  _ hell _ ?” 

 

“I thought I could prove to you– Something is down here. I read about it. I thought that I could find it and–” 

 

“And what? Get yourself killed? That should stop the Evil Queen nicely,” Emma grinds out, and Henry flinches and Emma is afraid enough of driving him away that she lowers her voice. “Henry, you can’t keep running off like this. Not to prove anything to me or her or yourself. You’re going to get hurt, and I– I–” 

 

“What?” Henry demands. “You’ll leave? You’re going to do that anyway, aren’t you? You’re going to give up on your parents and the curse and…” He squeezes his hands into fists and Emma blinks away dust with burning eyes. “I’m going to make you believe, and  _ then  _ we’ll see if you go.” 

 

He glares at her, defiant, and she feels dull and empty and afraid. “Come here,” she says blankly, getting back into place and wrapping her arms around him. “They’re going to pull us back up.” 

 

Emma sees Regina first when they’re hoisted above ground, and Regina nearly lurches into the pit when she catches sight of Henry. She’s laughing a moment later– just a mother, so full of love that there’s no sign of thirty-plus years of the Evil Queen wearing away at her– and Henry is swept into her arms in an instant. He trembles and holds on tight to her, forgetting the tension and fighting, and Emma watches them from afar as Graham helps her out of the harness and clasps her shoulder. “Nice work,” he says.

 

She barely hears him. She stumbles to them– a mother, overwhelmed with love for her child, and said child receptive to it at last– and hovers, crouching down beside them with a hand landing on Regina’s back as she reaches for Henry with the other. Henry looks at her with watery eyes, and he’s so  _ young _ , a little boy who only wants her to stay. 

 

Regina pulls away, tucking Henry under her arm, and then she looks up and Emma says stupidly, “You okay?” at the sunshine she can see glowing on both their faces. 

 

She expects to be turned away, pushed out of the relieved embrace and back into her place, but instead a hand is extended and Regina brushes soft knuckles to Emma’s jawline. “You did it,” she says, and Emma’s stomach flutters like butterflies, like a night fourteen years ago when she’d made candles shine for Regina. Like  _ home  _ can be more than just a Volkswagon Beetle and a book of fairytales. 

 

And maybe she stares for too long, because suddenly Regina is flushed and says in a sharper voice, “Deputy, you can clear the crowd away,” and her knuckles linger for only a moment more. Emma stumbles back, watches mother and son with their eyes still on her, and she does as ordered with dreamlike, unsteady moments.

 

Regina and Henry are gone before she’s done, and it’s nearly nightfall when Graham and Emma finally finish cordoning off the mines. “Take a few hours before your shift,” Graham offers, and she can only nod dazedly and flee for her car.

 

She’d left it unlocked, but the book remains untouched where she’d left it. She wonders what it is, to be so immersed in a child to forget everything else that matters. She aches to know, and her path leads her instead to a quiet apartment building a few blocks from Main Street.

 

Mary Margaret opens her door, her eyes red and wet from events that Emma can’t surmise, but she looks at Emma with concern and affection and Emma blurts out, “Sorry to bother you so late.” 

 

“Emma,” Mary Margaret says, and it’s a bit fond, a bit exasperated. It’s how a mother might sound. “It isn’t–” 

  
Emma keeps her arms folded, elbows hard and pointy and not nearly protection enough for this moment. Her heart is punctured through, by Henry’s grimy face in a tunnel and his mother’s knuckles against her skin, by Mary Margaret watching her with clear eyes and clear hope. “Is that spare room still available?” she whispers, and Mary Margaret smiles a watery smile and steps aside to let her in.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is primarily a rewrite of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. Please be prepared for everything that happened in that episode, including consent issues both discussed and described (though not in depth).

It's beginning to feel a bit like a pattern, being in the same town as Emma Swan. Invariably, Emma shifts something, wears away at the curse and at that stony, cold place within Regina at the same time. Emma saunters in with a roll of her eyes and that self-effacing grin and Regina is infuriated and threatened and eternally drawn to her. 

 

It’s the book. The book has taken Emma Swan and turned her into a  _ variability _ for Regina, something she'd never chosen that can turn everything she values on its head. Emma carelessly mows through Regina’s life, upturning her town and her curse and her relationship with her son, and Regina should be  _ ruining  _ her but instead tracks her movements greedily, finds opportunities to bump into her and impart a bit of snark and stroll off smirking. 

 

Emma Swan is a self-destructive addiction, and Regina has no immunities built for her. 

 

Emma moves in with Mary Margaret. The book doesn't explain her motivations– it so rarely does, and Regina has never felt so frustrated with that as she does now– but there's a photo of her there on the first night, sipping cocoa and staring at Mary Margaret with quiet intensity. Another piece of Regina’s curse unravels.

 

She watches Emma the next day, heading from her  _ home  _ to  _ work  _ to every other gradually permanent piece of her life now. She watches her walk Henry to Regina’s office and watch him depart with wistful eyes and she puts down the book and peers out the window instead, because drawings can never capture the affecting magnetism that is Emma’s gaze. 

 

Emma raises her face upward as Regina stares down at her and catches Regina’s eyes, and Regina is breathless with absurd wanting. 

 

Emma smiles, the skin around her eyes crinkling and the sadness kept at bay. 

 

Regina stumbles backward, struck by lightning, and hates herself for it. She grinds her teeth together and  _ hates, hates, hates, _ until there's no choice but to make a snippy phone call. 

 

She needs a distraction,  _ god _ .

 

* * *

 

There had been a time when Emma hadn’t really understood what she’d been reading in the book, when she’d been too young to grasp what any of the encounter between the Evil Queen and the Huntsman had meant. Even then, she’d felt vaguely possessive over Regina and uncomfortable with the story, had flipped past it to read more about the war between Regina and Snow instead. 

 

_ Possessive and uncomfortable  _ sums it up nicely. She still doesn’t know how much of a choice in the matter Graham has, when Regina holds his heart, but she knows enough to be nauseous and furious when she’s picking up a late shift for him and sees an intruder tumbling out of Regina’s window. She ambushes the intruder with her nightstick and he falls back, and she realizes with horror exactly what she’s witnessing. 

 

“You...this is volunteering at the animal shelter?” she demands furiously. 

 

He only looks up at her, sheepish. “Change of plans. Regina needed me to–”

 

“ _ Sleep with her _ ?” A hot bolt of jealousy, coupled by a second burst of nausea. Emma ignores his denials, throws the patrol car keys at him, and storms off and then back around when the car is gone, stands on Regina’s porch and paces back and forth in a fury. 

 

She’s in a state when she makes it back to Mary Margaret’s apartment, and she doesn’t dare explain it to Mary Margaret, who might be stupid-in-love with David but isn’t stupid enough to be furious about her boss and  _ his  _ boss doing it. As if it’s any of Emma’s business. As if Emma  _ cares  _ at all about–

 

She drinks at the Rabbit Hole that night, certain at least that Regina will never find her there. She’s never been quite so unwilling to see her, her book shoved back under the passenger seat in her car and her mind focused singly on  _ literally anything  _ but Regina. 

 

By the next morning, she's in a foul enough mood that she drops her afternoon shift a half hour early when she sees Regina start toward the sheriff’s station in her book. She grits her teeth and brushes past her, nearly flinching when Regina’s hand lands on her elbow. 

 

“Really, Deputy,” Regina says, smirking in that way she does before she lands a particularly devastating blow. Emma has learned not to tense, but to relax, letting it bend but never break her. “What could you be running from today? Your commitments? The usual,” she decides, and god, she’s so infuriatingly smug; and every time her lip curls, Emma can only imagine it pressed to Graham’s.

 

“Graham isn’t here,” she says flatly, wrenching her arm free.

 

Regina’s eyebrow quirks. “Trouble in paradise, hm?”

 

“Go to hell.” 

 

She stomps off, glaring at the door to Granny’s with desperate single-mindedness, and Regina calls after her, “Jealousy doesn’t become you.” 

 

Emma freezes and turns around, very slowly. Regina is still smirking, still smug, and Emma wants to stalk right back to the door to the station and shove Regina against the wall and– 

 

There’s a flicker of desire on Regina’s face, or is it irritation? Why is Regina so hard to read– why is everything so  _ fucking  _ hard with Regina, where Emma never knows where she stands and dammit,  _ why is she still sleeping with Graham _ .

 

She flees to Granny’s and then back to her new apartment, where Mary Margaret is just returning from school and promptly makes her cocoa the moment she stomps in. “Regina?” she says knowingly. 

 

“Always,” Emma mutters, and she takes the book upstairs to peruse it. 

 

She winds up flipping through the pages just after the curse, squinting around for any reference to Graham; and when she finds nothing, she sulks and go downstairs and is terrible company to a very tolerant Mary Margaret until she escapes to Granny’s again to buy an apology dinner.

 

And, of course, Graham is at Granny’s. Emma makes an about-face and he chases her out, making frantic excuses. “I don’t give a damn!” she finally explodes. “As long as you’re two...consenting adults…” She falters and Graham takes it as a sign, somehow, and then his lips are on hers, insistent. 

 

He gasps. She shoves him away, sick and angry and tired of excuses and complications and  _ jealousy doesn’t become you _ , what the hell kind of– “What the  _ hell _ ? You are out of line, Graham.” 

 

“I saw it!” he says, stumbling backward, and he’s staring at her as though she’s a ghost. “I saw– the wolf. It’s– I just needed to  _ feel _ something, Emma–” He’s barely coherent, drunk and staggering toward her again, and she turns on her heel, breaks away from him and curses the day she’d ever decided she needed to stay in Storybrooke.

 

* * *

 

Regina is trembling with rage by the time there’s a rapping at the door, a page from her book torn in her hands and the picture of Graham kissing Emma crumpled in her palm. She yanks the door open, her face still thunderous, and Graham says, his words slurred and more accented than usual, “Is Henry asleep?” 

 

“Oh,  _ hell  _ no,” Regina says furiously, but he’s already upon her, reaching for her as though he thinks that she’ll just– fold into his arms, give him whatever Emma wouldn’t– 

 

She shoves at him and scratches and it takes a full minute of struggling before he seems to hear her, to realize that she  _ means  _ it, and she’s shaking and nearly gasping with fury by the time he falls away from her and slides to the ground against one column. He’s horrified and she scrapes at her own skin, watches it turn red and raw and it’s still somehow not enough. 

 

“I saw a wolf,” Graham says urgently. He doesn’t apologize. They never apologize, and she doesn’t think she could stand it if he does now. “I saw– there was a man, and the wolf, and a boy–” 

 

“Don’t talk to me,” Regina says shortly. “Go back to  _ Emma  _ if you need an audience.” Her fingers dig deeper into her skin, nails sharp against it. “I’m done with you right now.” She turns to slam the door and return to the safety of her home.

 

“The Evil Queen,” Graham says, and Regina pauses in the doorway. “I remember her.” 

 

“She’s a fairytale,” Regina retorts, cold and haughty. “You’d do better to forget her.” 

 

She un-crumples the page when she’s back inside, tears it in half and cuts Graham’s face swiftly from it, and instead there’s only Emma with her hands extended to push him away and her eyes open and wide and uncertain. She’s wearing an oversized shirt that falls nearly from her shoulders and her hair is soft in golden waves and she’s– approachable. Soft, instead of the slick Emma who can shrug off all of Regina’s blows and still remember to grab her arm to calm her. Instead of the Emma who can  _ handle  _ Regina, and Regina seethes still and glares at a delicate, visible collarbone as Emma stares at Graham like a princess who’s finally found her knight.

 

She  _ hates _ them, both of them, and they deserve each other.

 

* * *

 

Graham is sitting on a bench outside Granny’s with Henry, the two of them thick as thieves with Henry’s book propped up on Graham’s lap, and Emma is caught somewhere between discomfort and envy at the sight of them. Henry still won’t let her see his book– he says she  _ isn’t ready _ , and then had asked some cryptic questions about …Neverland…? that had left her at a loss– and now Graham has access to yet another of Emma’s…

 

_ Well.  _ She sets her jaw and stalks into the station, determined to do her job while Graham babbles about fairytales. She hurls darts at the dartboard and misses wildly, and she’s bent over retrieving them when there’s a light knock on the door and the click of familiar heels against the floor. “Graham isn’t here,” Emma says again, brusque as she had been the day before.

 

Regina leans against the wall, watching Emma’s bent figure with light interest. “Oh, I’m not here to talk to him. I’m here for you.” 

 

“Always a pleasure, Madam Mayor,” Emma says, rising to eye her tiredly. “What now?” 

 

“Stay away from Graham.” The directive is casual, but the words are like steel, and Emma jerks and wants to scream at the sheer unfairness of it all.

 

“I don’t know what you heard about Graham and me, but–” 

 

“I heard enough.” Regina is thin-lipped and glaring, but there’s still a tight smile on her face. “You forget that I have eyes and ears everywhere. I know exactly what happened between you.” 

 

“Nothing,” Emma says, and she refuses to examine why it’s  _ so  _ vital that Regina knows that. “Nothing that meant anything.” She isn’t going to earn Regina’s ire with a kiss she hadn’t chosen. And how  _ dare  _ she, acting as though she has some right to– to any decisions on Emma’s kisses when–

 

“Of course,” Regina says smoothly, her eyes narrowing. “Because you’re incapable of feeling anything for anyone.” Emma takes a step back, hitting the edge of the desk and seizing onto it before she does something stupid, like approaching Regina. Regina is scornful and dark-eyed, anger in every syllable, the attempt at casual gone. “There’s a reason you’re alone, isn’t there?” 

 

It  _ hurts _ , just as much as the triumph in Regina’s eyes does. None of this is fair. She didn’t ask for any of this. And all she can do is lash out with the same sharp, “Jealousy doesn’t become you, Madam Mayor,” and watch as Regina’s shoulders stiffen.

 

Mary Margaret had suggested the same to her earlier, well-meaning and so  _ wrong _ to classify any of Emma’s emotions on this as jealousy. There’s a certain sort of satisfaction in getting to accuse Regina of it instead.

 

“Hardly,” she drawls, but her face is set and unsmiling. “Graham is mine.”

 

She says it with such certainty that Emma sets aside her indignance and finds her revulsion instead. “Well, yes, but he doesn’t have much choice in that, does he?” Regina stiffens even more. “You’re his...his boss. You basically hold his…” Emma realizes too late that she’s curving her fingers inward, miming a heart without thinking. “His future in your hands,” she amends.

 

Regina scoffs, but her face has lost some of its pallor. “Don’t be naive, Deputy. If you think Graham is the first to be in an objectionable–”

 

“I thought you’d know better than to initiate it,” Emma says blankly, and she  _ had _ . She knows too much of Regina’s history to see Graham as anything more or less than an act of control, of a woman who’d had no power seizing it for herself when she can find it. She can understand and still loathe everything about the relationship, everything about–

 

Regina is still staring at her with wary, haughty demeanor, and Emma wants to press harder and chokes on her words instead. “You know nothing about us,” Regina says coolly. “You know nothing about my decisions or my life.  _ Stay out of it _ .” She twists around and stalks from the room, and Emma hurls another dart at the dartboard and stabs it into the drywall instead. 

 

It’s Graham who comes in when she’s yanking it out of the wall. “Emma,” he croaks, and she turns around. He’s pale and sweating, already transformed from the Graham she’d seen outside the station, and she bites back her hostility and distaste for the whole situation and rushes for the first-aid kit.

 

“I’m fine,” he says, twitching. “I’m not sick.” 

 

“You look like you’re dying,” Emma says politely. “Can you just–” She doesn’t want to touch his forehead, doesn’t want to touch him at all, and she shoves a thermometer awkwardly at him instead. “What the hell kind of hangover–” 

 

“It’s  _ him _ ,” Graham insists in a low voice. “He’s coming. He’s been with you all this time–” He looks around wildly, staring into the shadows of the jail cells and then back at Emma in desperation. She stares back, baffled. “The Queen can’t stop him. No one can–” 

 

“ _ Who _ , Graham?” 

 

“The author– he tried to warn you,” Graham says, and then leans over and coughs, hands on his knees, bent over as Emma finally puts a reluctant hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her with new intensity. “The book, Emma. The  _ book _ .” 

 

“Henry’s book?” she asks. She’s following lines of logic that don’t exist, Graham flitting from topic to topic without coherence. 

 

“His, too,” Graham says, and then starts hacking again, his hand biting into his chest. “I need–”

 

“You need a doctor,” Emma says, but she’s caught in–  _ the author, he tried to warn you _ , what does that  _ mean _ – to warn her about Regina? To warn her– “Come on, Graham,” she says, pushing it aside. “Let’s get you to the hospital.” 

 

“I don’t need a doctor! I won’t go out– the sun is setting, Emma. That’s  _ his _ –” Graham looks around frantically, and Emma takes a step away from him. His eyes clear up. “I’m sorry about last night,” he says, and the mania has vanished from his eyes, just like that. “I...I think it may have awakened something,” he says weakly, and collapses.

 

She catches him and nearly falls herself, barely supporting him into his chair, and calls an ambulance, with little luck. “There’s nothing wrong,” the EMT says. “Elevated blood pressure from whatever has him all worked up, but nothing physically wrong.” Graham is twisting in place, awake again, and the EMT guides Emma away from him. “I would talk to Dr. Hopper,” he says in a low voice. “I think you’re looking at a mental break of some sort, not…” He nods to Graham, struggling to sit and looking around frantically.

 

“Yeah,” Emma says, her mind working furiously. “I think I know what triggered it.” She ducks out of the station and hurries across the street, to where Henry is still perched in his usual after-school spot, reading his book at Granny’s. “Kid, what did you tell Graham?” 

 

Henry raises his eyebrows scornfully at her, a picture-perfect miniature Regina. “It’s on a need-to-know basis,” he says, and Emma makes a mad grab for the book, seizing it and opening to a page near the end. 

 

It’s a picture of what looks like a seething mass of blue-white energy, and in the center of the maelstrom is a woman, her hand outstretched and a knife drawing in the energy like a lightning rod. Emma gapes at the page– glances to the text and catches her name, then Regina’s– and Henry yanks it back out of her hands. “Emma,” he says, sounding very disappointed in her, and she ducks her head, embarrassed at her own desperation. 

 

“I just...what is he talking about? What author? Henry–” 

 

Henry watches her, and sometimes she feels a bit as though he’s more invested in her as the savior or whatever his book has been telling him than he is in her as his birth mother. He looks at her as though he’s assessing her, measuring her worth, and she swallows and backs away from him in a fit of insecurity.

 

When she turns back to the station, it’s just in time to see Graham wandering from the building, heading toward the woods. She takes off after him, leaving Henry behind, and grabs Graham’s arm. “Hey! What the hell now?”

 

Graham doesn’t turn, just raises a hand ahead of them, and Emma sees the wolf for the first time. “It knows where it is,” he says, staggering after it.

 

“What? Where what is?” Emma demands.

 

Graham turns to her, still sickly and pale with his hair plastered to his face. “My heart,” he says, clutching at his chest again, and Emma stumbles after him with dread in her own heart.

 

* * *

 

The cemetery is dark by the time Regina makes it there, her book safely in the car and a bouquet of flowers that she’d hastily put together in her hands. She makes a beeline for the vault instead of waiting for Emma and Graham to show up, and she’s nearly there when she sees a movement behind her.

 

She turns, but there’s nothing but shadows behind her, shifting in the light of the moon through rustling leaves. They’re dark– darker than they should be, grey turned to black, and there’s something about them that she feels as though she might fall into. She lurches forward for an instant, drawn and repulsed at once.

 

And then there’s a voice from the direction she’d been heading, and she twists in a panic, unnerved, and sees Emma and Graham exiting her vault instead. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she spits out. Her heart is racing, new panic in the way that they spring apart and stare at her, startled. They’re just...lurking near her vault together, on some intimate mission instead of–

 

“What are you doing here?” Emma retorts, challenging, and her eyes are still cold when she looks at Regina. There had been a time just days ago when there had been vulnerability and so much familiarity, but all that has been gone with this... _ squabble  _ over a  _ meaningless, worthless _ … 

 

Regina lifts her chin. “Bringing flowers to my father’s grave like I do every Wednesday,” she says coldly, and Emma’s brow arches in polite disbelief.

 

Well. Nothing about Emma is polite. “You’re full of it,” Emma snaps, and Graham puts a hand on her arm and that’s just  _ enough _ , really. 

 

“You have some nerve,” Regina bites out. “You come into my town and take  _ everything  _ from me–” She gestures vaguely at Graham even though it’s  _ wrong _ , it’s not what she’d meant, and there’s an odd sort of guilt that doesn’t sit well from Emma’s blank  _ I thought you’d know better _ and god, she needs a drink. “You destroy everything I hold dear–” 

 

“Regina, it’s not about her–” Graham interjects, reaching for her, and she slaps his hand away. 

 

“Don’t  _ talk  _ to me!” she snarls, and Emma is looking angrier and angrier and it’s worse than Regina had ever imagined, being the subject of such hostility from the other woman. It makes her want to lash out, to  _ destroy  _ and  _ devastate  _ and devastate herself all the same. It makes her want to seize Emma and force her to  _ understand _ , and instead she is helpless to do anything but attack. “Neither of you get to talk to me. You’re meaningless–” 

 

“I want my heart back,” Graham says unsteadily, and Emma’s hostility has faded into a gaze Regina can’t unpack, eyes distant and pained and longing. God damn it, she’s in love with the big oaf. Regina shakes with fury and despair. 

 

“You never had much of one to begin with,” she grinds out, and her eyes keep flickering to Emma, unbidden. Graham is speaking and all she can see is Emma, her mind fuzzy and dizzy and her heart burning with impotent rage. Emma stares back, her fists clenched and her eyes still distant, and Regina has no response for those unfathomable eyes.

 

Finally Emma hisses, “Not worth it,” and stalks past her, Graham following behind her like an obedient puppy. Regina hurries into the mausoleum, sets the flowers down at her father’s grave, and trembles and trembles and trembles.

 

After what must be hours, she moves again.

 

There’s only one choice, now that Graham knows too much. That’s all. She can’t do anything but finish him off at last, take the heart she holds and crush it to dust to preserve her curse. She descends into the secret vault below the mausoleum, her fingernails digging crescents into her palm, and her cheeks are wet by the time she raises a glowing heart in one hand and squeezes it.

 

Somewhere, Graham must be stopping in his tracks, doubling over as Emma reaches for him and cries out his name. Somewhere, Graham’s memories are making a horrific sort of sense and maybe Emma will believe it’s a heart attack with an extended preliminary. Maybe she’ll understand the truth and Regina will come home to Emma in her doorway with a gun pointed at her head. 

 

Her fingers tighten around the heart and she imagines the grief that’ll follow, Emma’s heart bruised just a bit more from this newest loss. It doesn’t  _ matter _ . Emma barely knows Graham, no matter how infatuated with him she is. Regina doesn’t owe Emma this sensitivity anymore. She isn’t a little lost orphan anymore, she’s the woman who is methodically ruining Regina, and Regina has to crush her in any way she can. She has to crush–

 

“Don’t,” says a voice from the shadows, and Regina turns.

 

Emma is standing at the base of the stairs, her eyes wide and horrified as she takes in the scene in front of her. “Don’t,” she says again, her hands raised disarmingly. Regina can only gape at her. “I know it’s...it’s easier to crush his heart and pretend that the curse isn’t beginning to break, but it won’t be, not in the long run. Not when the rest of the town remembers and they can point to him as a sign that you haven’t changed.” 

 

_ How?  _ Regina wonders, but Emma gives her no answers, only approaches with careful steps as though she’s afraid she might spook Regina. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lies boldly, glowing heart raised in her hand. “You’ve been listening to Henry’s fairytales.” 

 

“Regina,” Emma says, rolling her eyes, and Regina is still frozen in place as she approaches, still can’t move away as Emma closes her hand around Regina’s.  “You know I have a book, too.” 

 

“Oh, yes, let me guess what it says,” Regina says darkly. “The Evil Queen, despot, murderous, irredeemable. Only the savior can destroy her for good. Her heart is blackened and her– her son–” Her voice falters, and she’s  _ weak _ , too weak in the face of Emma’s calm understanding.

 

“Regina,” Emma says again, quieter and more careful, and the hostility is still there but muted, and Regina’s fingers go limp around the heart. Emma retrieves it, places it back into its box and doesn’t confirm any of what Regina knows  _ must  _ be true about her book, and says, “Haven’t you done enough shitty things today?”

 

“Go to hell,” Regina says, the snarl back in her voice. “You think you can– stand over me sanctimoniously and pass judgment? You can pretend you came down here out of noble intention to save Graham, but you’re just pissed I got to him first–” 

 

Emma rears back, infuriated.  _ Good _ . “I’m not fucking jealous!”

 

“Oh, you are,” Regina says, backing away from Emma to lean against the wall of the vault. “You can pretend to be some lily-white savior, bent on saving the world, but I know you. I know you’re nearly  _ seething  _ at the fact that he’s  _ mine _ .” Emma’s eyes flicker in acknowledgement, but there’s something else in them, that desperation in her eyes that Regina had been sure had been about Graham, but… “I know you’re jealous,” she repeats, an impossible theory dancing at the edges of her mind like a breathless hope. Emma is glaring fiercely, aflame, beautiful and impossible and glowing like the sun. “I’m just not clear yet on who you’re jealous of–” 

 

Emma’s lips are on hers in an instant and Regina draws in a ragged breath that vibrates against them, a moment of relief before she’s clawing at Emma’s shoulders, pulling her in closer. Emma has a hand tangled in her hair, yanking her closer with no regard for pain or pleasure, and Regina gasps with both into her mouth and bites hard on her lip. Emma kisses her sloppily, bites at the curve of her jawline and then returns to her lips, sucks Regina’s lower lip into her mouth and slides her free hand onto Regina’s ass.

 

She squeezes and Regina nearly chokes, startling against her body and digging her fingers into Emma’s back, and Emma lifts her up to hook her knees on Emma’s hips. She throws her head back against the wall, grinding against Emma, and Emma kisses her neck and bites her earlobe and squeezes her ass again. “Emma,” Regina says breathlessly, mindlessly, a hand snaking out between them to cup Emma’s breast and wiggle a thumb over her nipple. Emma groans, long and loud, and sucks on Regina’s pulse point until Regina chokes out her name again.

 

It’s everything she’s yearned for since she’d first seen Emma Swan on her doorstep, and she’s already certain that nothing else will compare to–  _ fuck _ , Emma’s finger sliding from her ass to dip between her legs, and Regina letting out a cry loud enough to scare off some of the bats roosting in the mausoleum above. It feels like sweet, sweet relief, and she pulls Emma closer by the chin and kisses her, again and again until Emma lets out a strangled noise and drops her.

 

She falls unceremoniously, lands in a crouch and gapes up at Emma with wild eyes, and Emma takes a step back, breathing hard and a hand still half-outstretched to her. “I... _ oh shit _ ,” she says, and if that’s not a summary of today, Regina doesn’t know what is. 

 

She’s still sitting on the ground when Emma flees, back up the stairs and out of the vault, her boots pounding against the hard stone and her white face turned back to Regina only once. She might look regretful, but Regina can’t trust her own perceptions right now, when she’s still lit like a live wire. She can’t do much of anything but sit, shell-shocked and aching, overwhelmed and desperate for more.

  
She doesn’t know why or how, but the candles she keeps around the vault are all lit, the vault bright with orange flames that illuminate flickering shadows in the darkest corners of the room. 


	6. Chapter 6

Emma Swan had learned long ago never to pursue her crushes. Crushes are just a lead-in for eventually being screwed over, whether they’d stolen from her foster home and gotten her booted out, gotten her locked up and pregnant, or recently tried to squeeze the still-beating heart of a man to death.  _ Right _ . That happened. Doomed to failure.

 

_ Crush  _ seems an outdated word for what Regina does to her stomach, twists it and makes her want to laugh and throw up at the same time. Maybe it had been a crush when Emma had been fifteen and Regina hadn’t been  _ real _ , but now it’s far more potent, far deadlier.

 

She doesn’t sleep after she runs from the vault. She lies in bed and stares at the image of them in the book with mounting nausea. The usually-descriptive language of the book is surprisingly bashful when it comes to anything sexual, but even the writing can’t make the picture that has appeared any less passionate. It’s from a side angle, Regina’s legs wrapped around Emma and their lips joined, and Emma remembers firm, needy kisses that had driven her as wild as Regina’s roving fingers had.

 

“Shit,” she says again, and slides her fingers into her underwear. She needs release desperately, and if she’s imagining Regina’s fingers instead of her own,  _ well _ . That’s a harmless, harmless expression of attraction. It isn’t like placing all she is in the hands of her mortal enemy over a  _ crush _ . Regina would happily use any feelings against her, strongarm her out of town and keep Henry from her, and Emma has more than learned her lesson about ill-fated crushes. 

 

Her sleep is restless that night, and she tosses and turns and dreams of Regina’s lips and ass and the curves Emma had memorized the night before until she wakes up, flushed and needy again. 

 

It’s just attraction, nothing deeper, and she only avoids going to Granny’s in the morning because she isn’t ready to deal with a Regina Mills Coping Mechanism. She suspects every single one of them involves Regina with her lip curled in disgust, dismissing Emma from her presence without a smidgen of regret, and she  _ really  _ doesn’t need to see any of that. 

 

So she staggers into the station and makes some bad coffee with their machine, settling down at Graham’s desk before she sees that the jail cell is occupied. “Graham,” she says, frowning. She’d left him there the night before, made an excuse and hurried to her car to retrieve the book because she’d known too well what Regina could be capable of after their altercation. She hadn’t expected him to sleep in the cell, much less to still be sitting on the cot in the morning, looking groggy and dazed. “You okay?”

 

He doesn’t answer. And no, he isn’t groggy– his eyes are glassy and indistinct, and when he turns to look at her, it’s without any recognition. “Graham?” she says again, moving toward him. She snaps her fingers in his face and he doesn’t react. 

 

The closer she gets, the more discomfort she feels– as though there’s something just  _ wrong  _ about him, as though all the lines of his face are just out of focus. She blinks and looks around, but it’s only Graham who feels wrong, nothing else.

 

He doesn’t react when she reaches out to touch him, but she recoils. The wrongness is stronger here, like she’d stuck her hand into a pit of black tar and it had nearly sucked her in before she’d yanked it away. There’s something dark and horrifying about Graham right now, and she mumbles an excuse he doesn’t react to and flees from the station, still clutching the hand that had touched him in the other.

 

Something had gone wrong last night after Emma had left the station. Graham had been a bit addled before then, but he hadn’t been like this, completely drained of...of  _ everything _ . And Emma has a good idea why. 

 

Setting aside her reservations, she makes a beeline for Town Hall, pacing outside Regina’s locked door until Regina finally makes it up the stairs. She blinks at Emma, her eyes cool and unreadable. “Deputy.” 

 

“Madam Mayor,” Emma counters, nervous energy keeping her shifting from foot to foot as Regina unlocks her door. “We need to talk.” 

 

“I can’t imagine why,” Regina says stiffly, and Emma might actually think she was  _ hurt  _ if she hadn’t maybe killed a man last night. “I thought your exclamation last night really said it all.” 

 

Oh, fuck, she’s pissed, even if she isn’t hurt. Emma shifts uncomfortably. “Not...not about that. I need to know–” She shuts the door behind her and locks it, watching Regina’s eyes narrow as she does. “You didn’t... _ do anything  _ to Graham’s heart last night, did you?” 

 

“Graham again,” Regina repeats, her voice low. “I thought we were past this.” She sneers at Emma, and Emma purses her lips and studies her eyes instead for some hint of guilt. “Is that where you went last night after we–” She cuts off her own question, stalking back toward Emma. “Did you see it in your  _ book _ ? Another lie about the Evil Queen to poison–” There’s no guilt in her eyes, but there’s a darkness in them that has Emma reach out, hand outstretched to stop her approach.

 

Instead, it lands on Regina’s abdomen, and Emma sucks in a breath and looks at Regina’s lips. Regina lets out a short laugh and then moves forward, into Emma’s space. Emma draws in another deep breath, thinks of  _ ill-fated crushes _ , and leans forward to kiss Regina in a rush of desire. Regina seizes her by the chin, fingers digging into Emma’s jaw as though she might never let go, and Emma almost melts into her for a long, alarming moment before she’s shoved away.

 

Regina looks smug and perturbed at once, and Emma wipes off lips that hadn’t touched Regina’s and is embarrassed at how easily she’d taken the bait. “My book doesn’t lie,” she says, catching Regina’s gaze again. “But I mean that...Graham is totally unresponsive today. He’s sitting up, he’s breathing, but I don’t think that he’s at all aware of the world around him. And when I touched him…” She rubs her hand against her pants, desperate to get the sensation off it. 

 

Regina takes a step forward and lifts her hand. Emma freezes, watching long fingernails trail along the blue veins above her wrist. “There is something,” she says grudgingly. “I can’t really...I can feel it, even in this land. But I didn’t do it. Hearts are all or nothing. Either you’re dead or you’re alive.” 

 

“Are you sure you didn’t just...squeeze too hard?” Emma suggests, and Regina looks at her scornfully. Emma’s shoulders fall. “Just checking,” she says weakly. 

 

Regina’s fingers leave goosebumps along Emma’s arm, and Emma swallows and blurts out something she shouldn’t in response. “I thought– if it wasn’t the heart thing, it might’ve been kissing me. That started this, right? So maybe there’s something that I– I–” 

 

Regina’s brow furrows, and it’s impossible to see it as anything but concern. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s absurd.” She leans in and kisses Emma again, swift and breathtaking as a sudden dream, and Emma gapes at Regina with her heart pounding and her stomach in knots as Regina smirks and says, almost gently for a change, “See? I’m still me.” 

 

“Yeah,” Emma says, dizzy. “But...but if it wasn’t either of us, then who?”

 

* * *

 

She has a thousand questions, and Emma won’t answer any of them. “What did your book say about this?” she demands as they walk back to the station to check out Graham again. “Is your book the same as Henry’s? What does your book say about  _ me _ ?” That’s the most present question, and she does a poor job of hiding her urgency there. 

 

It isn’t fair that she’s gotten a book that has done nothing but weakened her toward her worst enemy, and Emma gets a book that shows her images of Regina squeezing hearts instead. The decks are stacked against Regina,  _ again _ , and she’s more bothered than she should be by Emma’s perception of Regina as villain.

 

Only Henry’s opinion should matter. Not a smug savior who’s come to town to doom her. 

 

It had been easier to see Emma as only a character in a story; not this woman who dashes into her office and makes bold accusations and kisses her. Not this woman who has a book that sets Regina off-balance, and she still won’t tell her a  _ thing _ . “I’m not talking about my book,” Emma says, leading her into the station. “It’s none of your business.” She flushes when she says that, and Regina peers at her, startled at the uncharacteristic reaction. “Look, can you just check out Graham?” 

 

“Fine.” He’s sitting on the bed in one of the cells, and Regina reaches out to touch him and falls back in her hurry to get away. Emma catches her as she retches, gagging on nothingness and something ugly and oily and frightening that surrounds Graham. “Water,” she wheezes, and Emma has a cup of water in her hand a moment later. She’s seated in the sheriff’s chair, and she gulps down water while Emma hovers and glances worriedly at Graham. “What the hell was that?” she finally demands.

 

Emma shakes her head. “I wish I knew.” She glances over at Graham’s empty face, somber. “So not the heart thing?” 

 

“Certainly not,” Regina says primly. “Not your kiss, either. That’s hardly enough to send someone into a catatonic state.” She means to sound disdainful, but it emerges inviting instead; and Emma’s lips curl into a grin before she’s done.

 

“Give me a few more minutes next time,” she says, her fingers brushing against Regina’s shoulder, and Regina hates herself for the heat that rushes through herself as Emma calls in Graham’s condition to the hospital. Emma paces, the light moment gone as quickly as it had come, and she keeps a safe distance from Graham but can’t quite tear regretful eyes away. “I shouldn’t have left him last night.” Regina raises an eyebrow, and Emma amends, “I mean, okay yeah, I definitely made the right call–” She glares at Regina again with bare disappointment, and Regina feels stirrings of shame despite herself. “But god, what happened?” 

 

“I’ll put in a call for the station security footage,” Regina decides. “You talk to anyone who might have been out last night and seen something. It wasn’t that late in the evening.” 

 

Emma nods sharply and opens her mouth as though she might say something. Regina waits. Emma’s mouth snaps shut. 

 

* * *

 

It’s how any investigation involving the two of them would go; Emma at the helm, doing all the footwork, and Regina sifting through shadows for answers that make sense. They don’t need to work together. They  _ don’t  _ work together, and curt phone calls to touch base sometimes seem like more than Regina’s willing to do. Emma takes it with good humor, flipping through her book instead for updates on Regina’s progress.

 

Of which there is almost none. The security tape has been misplaced, and the backup has to be specially requested and takes up to a week to arrive. Emma drives in circles at night, searching for anyone nefarious, but the only person she ever finds lurking is Regina.

 

On the third night of the investigation, Emma strolls into her office just after midnight and finds Regina seated in the chair behind the desk, one leg crossed over the other and her hands folded on her lap. She sits in the chair as though it’s a throne, and Emma thinks she’d have probably figured out Regina was a queen without even a book to clue her in. 

 

It’d all be very intimidating, if not for the open drawers and the papers strewn on the desk, as though someone had torn the station to shreds while looking for something. “Don’t tell me this is about my book,” Emma groans. “You cut the budget for the office cleaners when Graham hired me. I’m not taking care of this mess.” 

 

Regina just stares at her, a brow arched and her lips twisted in contempt, and Emma throws up her hands. “Fine. Whatever. It’s not here.” Regina still won’t speak, supremely cold and removed, and Emma suddenly desperately wants to  _ explain _ . Maybe it's just that uncertainty, lurking beneath Regina’s coolness, that triggers her own uncertainty. “I get it,” she says, pulling a chair up to the desk. Regina still won't speak. “I get that it feels like...I don't know, like I’m hiding it to spite you. But I’m not.”

 

Regina’s jaw moves beneath her skin and Emma hurries on. “It's just...I grew up with it, you know? It's a part of me by now.” And as much as she wants to trust this Regina with the truth– with all the knowledge of her that she has– this isn't a fairytale antihero anymore. This is a living, breathing, committer of atrocities, and what makes for good fiction makes appalling fact. 

 

But sometimes the hardest part of Regina being real is the way that her eyes speak volumes more than they ever could on paper, and Emma is helpless with yearning and guilt. “I could make it worth your while,” Regina says finally. It sounds playful, but there's a frightening vulnerability beneath it, as though even the offer itself is yielding more than Regina wants to. Emma doesn't know what Regina’s offering, but it's something  _ immense _ , something that makes fear flicker in Regina’s eyes when she suggests it. 

 

And Emma still can't fold. “I don't think you can do that.” There's nothing Regina can possibly offer that would be worth giving up this security, this private leverage that is so much more than that. Regina’s shoulders drop, just slightly, and Emma says, “You can't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing in my situation.”

 

Regina barks out a hoarse laugh. “Well, no, but no one expects  _ me _ to be the bigger one.”

 

Emma laughs despite herself, still hopelessly charmed by the grouchy, uncertain Evil Queen sitting opposite her. Fuck, this terrible crush. Regina has all the leverage she needs just by  _ existing _ in Emma’s sphere, and Emma can't let her know it.  _ Fuck.  _

 

“Besides, well…” Regina clears her throat, the humor gone from her eyes. “A book about you would be entirely different than a book about me. I've seen how Henry’s reacted toward me since he got his. I know what kind of light your book would paint me in.” She looks dead serious, and Emma leans forward, baffled. 

 

There's no way Regina really  _ cares _ about how positive or negative a portrayal of her would be. Regina doesn't give a damn about any of when it isn't her son's reading material. Regina doesn't give a damn about  _ Emma _ , so why–

 

She shakes her head, pushing aside her bewilderment. “Oh, please. You think a book about me would paint me in a positive light? You've set Sidney to do the background checks. You know I'm just barely on this side of fuck-up.” She bites her lip, embarrassed at the concession to what Regina must already think of her. 

 

Regina's eyes flash, and then soften, the gentle look she reserves only for Henry. Emma ducks her head, unwilling to see even her worst rival descended to pity her. “I can't imagine a book that wouldn't paint you as the stalwart hero,” she says dryly, and there's an odd note to her voice that has Emma swallowing and looking up again. Regina’s eyes are dark and unreadable, but her fingers twist together on her lap, and Emma doesn't know what that means anymore.

 

“I think…” Emma’s heart is thumping in her chest and she’s been patrolling for hours and it's much too late for this conversation. “The only good I've ever done is...is Henry,” she mumbles, and she doesn't know whether she means having him or giving him up or coming back with him to Storybrooke. 

 

Regina smiles, and it's the first time Emma can read every joyful, tearful bit of it without mystery. “The only good I’ve ever done,” she echoes. Her eyes shine when she looks at Emma now, when she thinks of Henry, and Emma swallows through the lump in her throat. 

 

“He’s– he’s amazing,” she says, and she can’t think of much beyond keeping that sparkle in Regina’s eyes. “A revelation. So smart, and brave, and...a miniature hero–” 

 

Regina’s eyes blaze at the  _ hero _ , the gleam of emotion forgotten. “Hero,” she repeats. “A hero despite me, I suppose. A hero, dreaming about defeating evil.” 

 

It is  _ too fucking late  _ for this conversation. “That’s not what I meant,” Emma says helplessly, watching a piece of Regina slip away from her and without words to fix it.

 

Regina rises, regal and straight-backed, and stalks across the room. Emma doesn’t flinch, her muscles tense and her mind working with desperate speed, but she shudders when Regina puts a hand on her cheek to raise Emma’s face to hers. “Never fear, Savior,” she says, and Emma watches shadows fall over her eyes and a dark smile curl into her lips as she reclaims a persona instead. “You’ll have your moment in the sun yourself once you break the curse and kill the Evil Queen.” Her thumb strokes Emma’s cheekbone, and Emma wants to recoil but can’t move from her grip. “Two heroes in one family. Imagine that.”

 

“Regina,” Emma whispers, her hands shaking as she reaches to her. “Don’t–”

 

Regina sweeps around, the jacket of her pantsuit swinging majestically with her, and she leaves without another word.

 

* * *

 

If anything, that nightmare conversation with Emma firms Regina’s resolve. No, Emma can never know about Regina’s book, not while she won’t yield an inch with her own. No, she can’t  _ trust  _ that Emma might have given her the benefit of the doubt while reading. No, she can’t trust Emma, period.

 

They might be working on finding out what happened to Graham together, but they aren’t allies. Not truly. And this mystery is best for keeping just sharp enough an eye on Emma’s whereabouts during the case that Regina knows when it’s safe to break into the Mary Margaret Blanchard’s loft to seek out answers.

 

She lifts the mattress, fishes through a box of old memories and a baby blanket that Granny had knitted Emma, and slides a speculative hand through Emma’s underwear drawer before it feels one step too intrusive even for her. The book isn’t in there, isn’t under the bed or wrapped in the blanket, and Regina stalks downstairs in a fit of frustration and digs through Mary Margaret’s belongings instead.

 

“This is a weird way to destroy Snow White’s happiness,” observes a dry voice from the doorway. Emma is leaning back, thumbs tucked into her belt loops, her eyes flickering with amusement. “She’s really fond of those incense sticks, if you want to hit her where it really hurts.” 

 

Regina springs away from Mary Margaret’s dresser. “What do you know of Snow White’s happiness?” she demands. She’s learned long ago that if she only stands tall and imperious, no one will question her presence where it doesn’t belong. “What do you know of...of any of this? What the hell does your book–”

 

“My book,” Emma drawls, smirking at her, “Goes everywhere I go, and can’t be found with the mayoral stash of skeleton keys.”  

 

Regina schools her features into something more safely impassive. “I wasn’t looking for your book.” 

 

“Sure.” Emma shuts the door and saunters to the couch, sinking into it and kicking off her boots. Regina watches her, stymied by her apparent contentment. “Long day, no answers.” She cocks her head. “Actually, just one. According to Gold, I’m the provisional sheriff of the town while Graham is...under the weather.” 

 

“Don’t let the power go to your head,” Regina says dryly, settling down beside her and folding her hands onto her lap. “There’s an ordinance that allows for me to appoint someone new in Graham’s place.” 

 

Emma wrinkles her nose. “Who’ve you got? Sidney?” Regina quirks a challenging eyebrow at her. Emma scoffs. “You wouldn’t do it. I know you.” 

 

“Not as well as you think you do, if you believe that,” Regina says coolly. “I’m sure your book paints a clearer picture than that.” 

 

Emma eyes her, still giving nothing away. This push-pull is getting tiresome, tugging more out of Regina than she’d ever cared to admit, and certainly to Emma Swan. “What exactly do you think is in my book?” Emma says, and Regina can feel the teeth of a trap setting in around her ankle, taking her hostage with a single cautious query. 

 

“More of the drivel in Henry’s book that turned him against me,” Regina repeats darkly from the night at the station, because she doesn’t need to imagine her worst nightmares when they’ve already come true. And she doesn’t need to ponder the sour taste in her mouth at the thought of Emma– Emma whom she’d protected, Emma whom she’d kept safe against all her better judgment– seeing only the worst of her. “The Evil Queen and every vile, twisted machination she’d ever committed. I’m the villain in every version of my story in existence. I don’t see why your story should be any–”

 

Emma clasps Regina’s cheek and kisses her, gentle and slow, and Regina can only stand in silence with her lips parted in disbelief. Emma’s tongue slips between her parted lips, her hand still stroking Regina’s cheek and her other hand moving instinctively for skin, for legs concealed within pantyhose that she eases off. Regina inhales, smells leather and cheap lip gloss and not-very-cheap shampoo, and she doesn’t understand but she also can’t bear to question it, not if it means Emma will stop kissing her.

 

Emma wiggles her fingers free from the pantyhose and tosses it onto the floor, and then she’s sliding Regina’s dress up carefully, letting it bunch beneath her breasts as her hands splay out across Regina’s abdomen. She still hasn’t stopped kissing Regina, achingly slow with only their mouths pressed together, each never roving far from the other’s lips. Regina shudders, burying her hands in Emma’s hair and feeling short breaths press against Emma’s palms. Emma murmurs, “Regina,” and Regina holds her tighter to her, unwilling to lose this at another moment of clarity that’ll have Emma fleeing again.

 

Emma laughs lowly, a series of vibrations against Regina’s lips, and she mumbles, “Are you trying to restrain me?” 

 

Regina scowls against her mouth. Emma tears her mouth away from Regina’s and presses against her, easing her down onto the couch, and hovers above her with bright, hungry eyes. “You don’t have to,” she admits, biting her lip. “I’m...I’m pretty much done for.” 

 

Regina doesn’t know what that means, not from Emma Swan; but then Emma is diving back down and not for her mouth, licking toned muscle and kissing a trail down her abdomen to trimmed, wiry curls. Regina squirms beneath her, groans her name and gets a sharp little bite on her inner thigh in response. She tightens her grip on Emma’s hair, pulling painfully and pushing Emma closer as she arches back against the arm of the couch.

 

Someone says, “Oh!” and it isn’t either of them. No, it’s nearly as delicious as Emma’s tongue flicking against her clit, and Regina has never wished harder for a fairy godmother to appear in that moment and grant a wish to ensure that Emma doesn’t look up.

 

But, of course, when has a fairy godmother ever answered to her? Emma jerks up, her eyes wide, and says, “Mary Margaret. Oh, god.” She moves in a clumsy attempt to shield Regina from Mary Margaret’s view and to reach out for her roommate, and Mary Margaret nearly falls over her grocery bags in an attempt to back away.

 

“It’s okay!” she says shrilly, stumbling away from her. “It’s– I’m just going to go tidy up upstairs. If upstairs is–” She looks suddenly frightened at the idea of what they might’ve gotten up to upstairs. Emma tugs frantically at Regina’s dress, pulling it back over her legs, and she jerks her head around, searching for her underwear.

 

“The lamp,” Regina says in a stage whisper, thoroughly enjoying herself. Mary Margaret’s eyes settle onto her lamp with dawning horror. Emma nearly races across the room to retrieve the panties, but the damage is more than done. 

 

“Stop it,” Emma says in a furious whisper, handing her the scrap of fabric. “Stop looking so smug. She’s going to kick me out, and I– I can’t–” Her eyes are still wide, still too revealing and too  _ terrified _ , and Regina feels a first flicker of guilt. “You should go,” Emma says, defeated, and it feels all too much like another rejection.

 

_ Fine _ . Somewhere deep inside, past the part of her that had decided over the past month or so that Emma Swan is  _ essential _ , she still has her pride. “Odd. Just moments ago you were so determined that I should come,” she spits out, her chin raised as she snatches her pantyhose from the floor and slips bare feet into her heels. Mary Margaret squeaks like the tiresome mouse that she is. Emma looks chagrined, but she doesn’t follow Regina from the room.

 

_ Fine _ . She still has her pride.

 

* * *

 

“Can we talk about this?” Emma blurts out after fifteen minutes of Mary Margaret’s stress-cleaning. She’s finally moved on from disinfecting the couch, which seems like a solid good sign, except for the part where she’s now mopping the floor with ferocious strokes. Emma stands at the kitchen counter, her hands folded and her heart pounding against her chest. Mary Margaret hasn't looked up yet, and  _ god _ . This isn’t even Snow White. She’s so screwed. “ _ Please _ , Mary Margaret.” 

 

Mary Margaret sets the mop to the side and holds it as though it’s a staff she’s leaning on for support. “So it wasn’t Graham,” she says finally.

 

Emma chews on her lip. “No,” she concedes. “It wasn’t Graham.” It would have been a hell of a lot easier if it  _ had  _ been Graham, rather than Mary Margaret’s worst nightmare. It would have been… “It’s complicated.” 

 

Mary Margaret smiles without humor. “Let me guess. It’s something about that book of yours.” 

 

Emma startles, eyes widening even more than before. “Book?” 

 

“I’m your roommate, Emma. I’m not an idiot.” Mary Margaret sets her mop down with a sigh, moving past Emma to retrieve two mugs from the kitchen. It’s a good sign. Maybe. “I know you haven’t been poring over Henry’s book since you got here. He’s just as inseparable from his as you are yours.” 

 

“My book is different,” Emma objects, because she knows that Mary Margaret tends to imagine the best in even Henry’s obsession with his book, but that doesn’t mean that  _ she  _ thinks it’s healthy. “It’s not– it’s been with me for a long time. It just...helps.”

 

“Helps with your feelings for Regina?” 

 

“Feelings?” Emma says, alarmed. “There aren’t– there are no feelings.” She’d told Regina that she’d been pretty much done for and she’s still beating herself up over it, because  _ fuck _ . Fuck, she can absolutely  _ not  _ have feelings for Regina. “I know, okay? I know. You look up Bad Ideas in the dictionary and it’s just a photo of Regina. She’s a nightmare and I…” 

 

“And you care about her,” Mary Margaret says softly, offering her a mug of cocoa. “She is Henry’s mother. Sometimes I think it’s her only redeeming quality.” Emma presses her lips together tightly. Mary Margaret stares at her and says, almost spellbound, “You really  _ do  _ have feelings, don’t you?” 

 

“Ugh,” Emma says, drinking her cocoa. “It’s just a crush.” 

 

Mary Margaret sips her cocoa and then sets it down on the table. “I have a crush on David, but you don’t see me going down on him on our couch,” she says, and Emma spits out half her cocoa. 

 

It’s a relief to be choking on cocoa when, as though beckoned by actual instinct (and years and years of watching moms in popular media embarrass their children and longing—), a pained  _ “Mom!”  _ nearly emerges. Instead, she can choke as Mary Margaret sits serenely opposite her and cough out, “Thanks for the visual.” 

 

“Ditto,” Mary Margaret says, eyes sharp but still dancing. “Feelings or not, let’s try to make sure I never see half-naked Regina again. Deal?” 

 

“Let’s never talk about this again, too,” Emma suggests.

 

Mary Margaret heaves a grand sigh. “Please.” She pauses. “But feelings or not, there’s also Henry to consider.” 

 

Of course, Mary Margaret even without any knowledge of her past thinks of a child first, is the mother Emma has always craved. Is the  _ friend  _ Emma has always craved, and Emma wavers and slumps and contemplates Henry for the rest of the evening in between endless second-guessing about Regina.

 

By morning, she’s decided that she’d been a bit of an ass last night, which is always a struggle to admit. Regina had been positively gleeful about getting caught by Mary Margaret, yes, but she hadn’t been the one to initiate any of it this time– or last, for that matter.

 

She takes a deep breath amid a wave of guilt and remembers Regina’s stiff face and the way she’d hesitated by the front door, as though she’d been waiting for Emma to follow her. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Somewhere along the line, she’d gotten so concerned with self-preservation that she’d left Regina out in the cold.

 

She stops at Granny’s and is even more guilt-ridden when she realizes that Regina isn’t going to make a stop there in the morning. Shamefaced, she orders a coffee and a full bag of Regina’s favorite breakfast foods and makes a stop at Town Hall before work. She leaves behind a peace offering, one that hopefully won’t unsettle Regina even more about the book’s encyclopedic knowledge of Regina’s tastes.

 

Regina doesn’t call or even drop by for a confrontation, and Emma buries herself in the Graham investigation instead. As frustrating as it is, at least it’s a distraction from Regina. 

 

So is Henry, who pokes his head into the station just after school and says, “Hi, Emma. Still no answers about Graham?” He doesn’t seem surprised about it, which is yet another mystery to unravel about whatever it is that Henry’s scheming. 

 

“Not unless you have any, kid,” Emma says, digging into the box that Ruby had brought over earlier for donuts. Henry makes a grab for one and she yanks the box away. “Come on, even I know what your mom thinks about sugar before dinner.” 

 

“I don’t care what she thinks,” Henry says sullenly, seizing the donut with renewed defiance and shoving it into his mouth. 

 

And honestly, it’s beginning to feel a bit tired, hurting Regina all the time. Even when she isn’t here. Even when it isn’t even Emma’s  _ fault _ . “Can you maybe lay off your mother for a little bit?” Emma says wearily. “She’s doing the best she can.” 

 

Henry looks betrayed. “She’s done something to you.” He examines her eyes, as though seeking out some sort of enchantment, and Emma bats him away with exasperation.

 

“No, she hasn’t. All she’s done is loved you, Henry. All she does is fight for you.” Henry scoffs. Emma is suddenly fed up, frustrated with this battle that is swiftly feeling nonsensical. “Okay, fine. You want proof? I can give you proof.” 

 

Henry scoffs again. “If you’re going to, like, start digging out my baby pictures, don’t bother.  _ She  _ already–” He stops talking. Emma has lifted her book out from her desk drawer and set it on the table with a thump. “ _ Emma _ ,” he says, and he looks betrayed again. His fingers touch the title,  _ Regina _ embossed in gold, and he gapes up at her in disbelief. “What is this?” 

 

“I’ve had it my whole life,” Emma admits. “I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t think it was real, until…” She waves around the room. Henry is still gaping at her, and she says hastily, “I wasn’t even sure it was real once I was here. I haven’t been lying to you.” 

 

“Everyone lies to me,” Henry says darkly.

 

Emma winces. “Says the kid who won’t show anyone his book, either. Here, look at this.” She won’t show Henry the entire book, not when he’s already so bent on despising his mother, but there’s one story that had stood out when she’d first caught up on the last ten years. She’d started it when she’d made it out of prison, before she’d realized that it would have a happy ending– before she’d realized that Regina’s happy ending had been her devastation, but she hadn’t gotten to the place where Regina had put the pieces together. When she reads it now, she sees what the book had cleverly omitted, as though it had grasped all along what its reader should and shouldn’t know. 

 

It’s a story of Regina with a baby Henry who won’t stop crying, who responds to Mary Margaret and not to her, and to a horrific secret she seems to know all along. “She knew you were the savior’s son,” Emma murmurs as Henry reads the story, drinking in every word like a revelation. “She knew and she made herself push it aside, because she never wanted that information to get in the way of your time together. So yeah, she loves you. Think you might believe it now?”

 

Henry only stares at her, lost and vulnerable. His fingers trace the picture that had made Emma stop reading at eighteen, just a page away from discovering that Regina had adopted her son. It’s Regina in her kitchen, holding up a tiny baby Henry as she kisses his cheek and looks at him with naked love on her face.

 

* * *

 

Regina has had a foul, foul day. 

 

There had been breakfast on her desk, exactly as she likes it, and she’d hurled it into the garbage in a fit of pique. Her office has smelled like apple for the remainder of the morning, and every inhalation has reminded her of Emma Swan.  _ Damn it all _ . 

 

Her experience in relationships has been either the star-crossed mutual love of her youth, or violence and pain and two people who’d loathed each other. She’s never been so trapped in her own desire, desperate to  _ have  _ someone who can’t make up her mind, and all she can think of is that gentle kiss on the couch and Emma’s hands against her skin,  _ damn it all _ . 

 

It’s a relief when the tapes from the night Graham had spent in the station are finally procured that afternoon. She’d planned to call Emma in to look at them, but her hand stalls on the phone and she plays them on her own computer instead, peering at Graham as he stumbles in circles and searches for something he can’t seem to find. 

 

Then– darkness. It’s too dark, enough that it almost seems as though the camera is being obscured, but when she squints, she can still see Graham, banging into walls and staring, frightened, into the shadows. 

 

It’s eerie in the silence, Graham struggling as the darkness seems to envelop him; and then he’s sitting in the cell, blank-eyed, and the shadows begin to recede. Regina watches with dread that she can’t name, and when the door to her office bangs open, she jolts in a primal sort of terror and bangs her knees against her desk.

 

It’s only Henry, Emma lingering behind him, and Regina breathes out, relieved even at Emma’s presence. She stands up, rubbing her knees as she watches Henry march toward her, and she says, “Henry?” and is nearly bowled over by his hug. “Henry!” The pain in her knees forgotten, she wraps her arms around him and holds him close. “Henry, what’s wrong?” 

 

“Nothing,” he says, and he holds her tighter. “Nothing’s wrong, Mom.” She blinks back tears, overcome, without words, and raises her eyes in bewilderment to watch Emma in the doorway, smiling at both of them with wistful, affectionate eyes. 

 

A frightening suspicion suffuses her– of what, she can’t say, not beyond  _ foul play _ – and when Henry finally tires of hugging her she drops to a crouch with her aching knees and says, “Sweetheart, do you want to go grab your knapsack and do your homework here while I finish up?” It’s what they’d done when he’d been younger, before that book and Emma and their relationship souring. Henry bobs his head, nothing but adoration in his eyes, and Regina can only gaze back with equal adoration until he runs out of the room to retrieve his backpack. 

 

Then, she fixes Emma with a dark look and says in a steely voice, “Explain.” 

 

Emma wets her lips with her tongue, a tiny nervous habit that Regina already recognizes. “I know you think my book is all about hurting you, but there’s...a lot more to it, okay? I just showed Henry the truth.” 

 

Regina’s stomach bottoms out. “You showed Henry...your book?” She can already imagine the conspiratorial looks, flipping through page after page that only solidifies that it’s them against Regina.

 

“Not all of it,” Emma says hastily. “Just one story. About...right after you got him, when you almost brought him back–” Regina stares at her, her lips parted and her heart hot with rising fury as Emma hurries to explain. “He was just so sure that you didn’t love him, which is  _ insane _ , and I had to show him somehow. I had to make him understand.” She looks so confused at Regina’s rage. “And I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to–” 

 

“This isn’t about last night.  _ Fuck  _ last night,” Regina says, her voice rising. “How dare you– how could you–” 

 

“I thought this was what you wanted,” Emma says helplessly, her hands gesturing at nothingness, moving with restless energy. “I thought you wanted–” 

 

“I don’t want Henry to love me because a book told him to!” Regina nearly shrieks, and Emma finally–  _ finally _ – looks at her with horror on her face. 

 

But it’s too late. Henry is back, standing in the hall outside Regina’s office, and he’s staring at both of them with his little face unreadable. “Henry,” Regina says brokenly, reaching for him, and he takes a step back. 

 

“I….I think I’m just going to go home,” Henry says, looking from Emma to Regina, and he backs away when they both say his name. “I have to…” He flees, and Regina knows better by now than to chase him when he’s running from her.

 

Emma lingers, her face stricken. “I didn’t think,” she whispers. 

 

“Of course not,” Regina says, twisting away from her so she can stare out the window instead of meeting Emma Swan’s gaze. “You never do.” 

 

“I thought...I thought I broke everything, and I had to fix it. Somehow.” Emma’s voice is small, but she has the presence of mind to finally close the door and give them some privacy. Regina watches Henry leave the building, his head down, and make his way toward Mifflin Street with dragging feet.

 

“Your book is an invasion of my privacy even when it’s only your own,” Regina says evenly, setting aside the nagging voice in her mind that reminds her that Emma isn’t the only one invading someone’s privacy with a book. “Showing it to my son is a violation.” 

 

She hears the intake of breath that is Emma flinching, and then the quiet, “I’m sorry, Regina. For this but also–” Regina can almost imagine the frustrated thrust of the heel of Emma’s hand against her temple. “It’s been a rough few weeks,” she says, her voice damp, and the part of Regina that aches when Emma is sad turns gentle and sympathetic. “I’ve done a lot of dumb things.” 

 

And it’s easy sometimes to forget the debt that Regina owes Emma– twenty-eight years with her family, taken from her with a curse of Regina’s own making– and sometimes she hears only the small girl who’d never even had the tooth fairy look in on her and softens. This is Emma juggling a mother and a son and a mortal enemy, and Regina has long ago given up on not giving a damn about Emma’s pain. 

 

“You mean like propositioning me?” Regina offers, tentative and tense. “Twice?” 

 

Emma laughs wetly. “That wasn’t the dumb part,” she says, an unspoken apology, and Regina knows that she’s hovering, waiting for Regina to turn in invitation and…

 

Regina is so tired, and she turns but remains unsure. And Emma  _ does  _ somehow know her well enough not to take it as an invitation. She sticks her thumbs in her jeans and says, “Is there anything I can do?” 

 

Regina shakes her head. “Please, just...please leave. There’s nothing else,” she says, closing her eyes in resignation. “I’m not going to poison you into eternal sleep or...or anything. I just need some quiet.” 

 

“Okay,” Emma says, defeated, and she moves to Regina and kisses her cheek. It’s tender and demands nothing in return, and it’s somehow exactly what Regina had needed in that moment. “Good luck with Henry,” she murmurs, and her smile is sad and bright and makes Regina take in a shuddering breath. “Just tell him the truth, yeah? I think he’ll listen.”

 

She moves for the door and Regina says, “Wait,” and moves forward, craving to  _ trust  _ as she hasn’t in decades. As she should know better now than to try with Emma. She’s been careful about how often she initiates kisses with Emma– not when she’s had so little control in the first place, not when even a kiss will be proof positive of her weakness– but she leans forward now and kisses Emma, tastes her lips and breathes in a shaky exhale. Emma touches her cheek where she’d kissed her, doesn’t push the kiss but keeps her fingers light against Regina’s skin, and Regina pulls away after a moment and closes the door behind Emma.

 

Her fingers tremble around her pen as she signs document after document, exhausted but unwilling to go home. She calls Granny’s and has Ruby send dinner over for Henry, and orders nothing for herself. She balances the town’s parks budget and arranges several transfers and meetings, and when she’s finally out of busy work to take her mind off of what’s waiting for her at home, it’s dark out and nearly Henry’s bedtime. 

 

She packs up her bag and sets out for home, sighing at her decision not to drive to work today. It’s cold out– colder than she’d expected– and the town is all but empty. Granny’s has a single lonely light outside, and the streetlamps are dimmer than usual– or is this just her exhaustion playing mind games with her? She thinks of the curse, wavering in place like a house of cards, and every change brought to the town is another herald of destruction.

 

Around one corner, then another; and Regina is walking down a quiet residential block just a few from Mifflin Street. The streetlamps are even dimmer here, and shadows stretch longer and longer as she walks down the road. She shivers, probably from the cold, and twists around just in time to catch a flicker in the shadows behind her. 

 

Someone is following her. 

 

She thinks of the Graham tape for the first time since Emma had dropped by and turns back, schooling her features into an impassive expression as she continues walking. A moment later, she spins around again and sees another flicker.

 

“Show yourself,” she orders. Stillness. “ _ Show yourself _ ,” she orders again, voice steely.

 

There’s a chuckle, cool and soft as a whisper. “As Your Majesty wishes.” 

 

He appears out of nowhere, a dozen feet from where Regina had thought the voice had come from. He’s tall, thin, with pale skin like ninety-five percent of this town but it’s stretched across his face like it doesn’t quite fit like that. He’s oddly familiar, like a face from another time, and Regina is unsettled. 

 

“Who the hell are you?” she demands, folding her arms together as she glares up at him. “You’re not from this town.”

 

“No one is  _ from this town _ ,” he says smoothly, and her skin crawls as his eyes trail over her. There’s no emotion on his face, and even less in his eyes. His lips move, but his face doesn’t move with the words. 

 

“I have no time for riddles,” she says, irritated and just uneasy enough that it annoys her, too. “If I find you anywhere in my vicinity again, I will destroy you. Whatever you’re here for–” 

 

“I’m here for the same reason as you are,” the man says, his lips curving into another blank smile. His eyes are dark– like black holes, fathomless pits that threaten to suck Regina into them, and she can only think of the Graham tape and, for a split second,  _ Emma, come find me _ – and then darker, growing rapidly as the streetlamps blink out. “Deep down, don’t we only crave oblivion?”

 

She runs, down the block with her heels already burning as her feet hit the pavement, and shadows spring up around her, climb up her legs and keep her immobilized as they grow and grow and grow. She opens her mouth to scream and nothing comes out, and the shadows wind around her waist and race up her arms and then stop, stiff around the sides of her head.

 

She screams voicelessly, throws herself forward, but it’s too late. She can feel the shadows seeping into her head, sinking through her like water on parched skin, and she can’t see or think or remember any of what’s come before this agony until she pitches forward, nearly hits the ground before she catches herself on a telephone pole. 

 

She squints in the light of the streetlamps at the sidewalk behind her, puzzled. There’s nothing there she could have tripped on. Maybe she’d just been lost in thought on the quiet walk home as she’d dwelled on what to say to Henry.

 

Vaguely, she feels the stirrings of confusion, as though she’s forgotten something she’d meant to do in the office, and she almost turns around and goes back before she looks at the time.  _ No _ . Henry’s waiting for her.

 

He’s already in pajamas when she climbs up the stairs, her legs peculiarly wobbly. “Hello, Henry,” she says, her voice equally wobbly. “I’m sorry I was out so late.”

 

“You had work to do,” he says, shrugging his shoulders as he leans back against his headboard. His book is open on his lap; and when she squints, she can see a picture of the two of them in the foyer, her likeness crouched down in front of Henry and Henry sullen but somber. She waits, expecting– something from him, but they’re back to silence and tension, Regina searching for words and Henry closed off to them.

 

She sighs and murmurs, “Good night, honey,” and kisses his temple, and Henry doesn’t respond until she’s nearly out the doorway.

 

“You said you didn’t want me to love you because of a book.”

 

She stops. Turns, her hands clasped together in front of her as she waits. “That’s right.” 

 

Henry looks down at his book, his fingers tracing the gold writing on the front. “The story is happening differently,” he admits, chewing on his lip. “I thought maybe– I thought it might be because you didn’t love me in this version.” Regina opens her mouth, horrified. Henry is speaking again before she can cut in. “I thought maybe you wrote the book and tried to use it to trick me.” 

 

“Why would I want to trick you into loving me?” Regina asks blankly.

 

Henry’s cheeks are tinged pink when he replies. “I don’t know. I didn’t really understand any of it, but it didn’t make  _ sense _ .” She can see the usual sullenness in his eyes, this time desperate and directionless. “So I thought...all those things. You lied to me,” he says swiftly, a defense that strikes her between her ribs each time. “You lied about the book and–”

 

“Of course I lied,” Regina says hotly, affronted at the accusation. “What was I supposed to do? Tell you that I was the Evil Queen? Lose you?” She’s still shaky from the walk home, still shaky from Henry’s defiant eyes, and too much slips out. “Do you think I didn't know– the first time you looked at me like you were  _ afraid _ –” She shudders, repulsed at it, and Henry’s eyes are wide now, unguarded. “I couldn't lose you, Henry. I didn’t want you to hate me because of a book, either.” 

 

Henry’s lips twist, still stubborn but uncertain. “So you lied.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Regina whispers. It’s strange, how freeing two rarely-used words can be. Or maybe it’s only freeing because of the hope that blazes anew in Henry’s eyes, the certainty in the room that those had been exactly the right words. “It was the wrong thing to do.”  

 

Henry smiles, small and wavering, and swallows before he whispers, “I don’t...I don’t love you because of a book.” He slides down under his blanket, looking away in embarrassment. “I just wanted to say that.” 

 

She crosses the room in careful steps, waiting until Henry turns back to sit on the bed and tuck the blanket over him. He squirms closer, still not meeting her eyes, and she kisses his forehead and whispers, “Good night, sweetheart.” Her lips linger against his forehead and he lies very still, his breath evening out before she pulls away. 

 

And when she does, his eyes are closed but he still has that small smile on his face. 

 

When she leaves Henry’s room, it’s to tidy up the house before she curls up on the couch in the study and sobs out of sheer relief. It’s a step forward after so many steps back, a first  _ honesty _ with Henry that feels right. 

 

She’s spent so long guarding herself from the world that she’d forgotten how to stop, how much more fulfilling it can be to be exposed to someone she trusts and loves. She’s so careful to protect herself that she’d built a castle around herself again and let no one inside, and she’s creaked open the door and found fresh air beyond.

 

She doesn’t hear the rapping at the door at first, so lost in her own world, but then it sounds again– louder and more urgent– and she jerks up. There’s only one person who’d willingly knock at her door at nine o’clock at night. There’s only one person who can’t let them linger with unfinished business for even a single night.

 

She checks her face in the mirror, brushes away tears and rubs off a smudge of makeup, and when she opens the door, it’s with a smooth smile. “Miss Swan.” 

 

Emma glares at her, eyes blazing. “Where is it?” 

 

“What?” Regina says, genuinely taken aback. Emma is furious, her fists clenched and shaking, and she glares at Regina as though Regina is the cause of it. “What the hell are you talking about?” 

 

“Don’t play innocent with me. You’ve been trying to get a hold of it since the vault. I know you took it.” Emma takes a step forward into the house, her eyes flickering wildly around the room. “I thought we were finally _ getting somewhere _ . I can’t believe that you’d–”

 

Comprehension at last. “Your book. Your book is missing?” 

 

Emma stares at her in disgust. “Oh, fuck you, Regina.” 

 

“I didn’t  _ take  _ it,” Regina says, irritated. “I’ve been a little busy trying to fix everything from the mess  _ you  _ made earlier. I’ve seen that trash heap of a car. Are you sure you didn’t just misplace it?” 

 

“I didn’t  _ misplace  _ it,” Emma snaps, mimicking Regina’s tone. “It was right where I keep it when I got home tonight. I left it in the car to unload some groceries, and when I came back downstairs to bring it up, it was gone.” 

 

“You think someone broke into your car to steal it?” Regina can feel the first stirrings of fear creeping through her, threatening to overwhelm her. Whatever that book is, it has too many of Regina’s secrets in it for it to be a harmless theft.

 

Emma studies her for a moment, the fight in her eyes dimming. “You really didn’t take it, did you?” 

  
“No,” Regina says, and she thinks of castle walls and a door half-open, the breath of fresh air that had been in Henry’s eyes when she’d told him the truth. She thinks of a book hidden away in her own room, and the pictures on every page that might give them the clues they need. “But there’s only one way to find out who did.” 


	7. Chapter 7

Emma follows Regina upstairs, bewildered at this newest turn of events. Regina is walking with purpose and hasn’t turned around since she’d made her pronouncement, and she’s ignored Emma’s questions. Emma’s beginning to think she might be walking into some kind of trap, but that’s...ridiculous. There’s no way Regina is suddenly going off the deep end  _ now _ . Unless she’d read something in the book–

 

But no. Emma knows when Regina is lying. 

 

Regina turns the corner upstairs and opens the door to the master bedroom, locking it behind Emma, and Emma feels a prickle of fear. “Look, if you’re going to kill me or something…”

 

She gets a scornful look and sits down at the edge of the chaise by the window instead, watching as Regina ducks into her closet and retrieves a locked box. “This is how you keep your possessions secure, by the way,” she mutters, which is _definitely_ a dig at Emma. She produces a key and unlocks the box and–

 

It’s a book inside. “You did take it!” Emma says, outraged, and then she sees the title on the cover of it. “Wait. What…?” 

 

Once, when she’d been a child, she’d been at a park in Boston and she’d thought she’d seen Regina on a bench opposite her, carrying an identical book. She’d thought it had been an illusion, a daydream, and it had made it into her book but that had been a daydream, too, right? None of it had seemed real until she’d been standing in Storybrooke, knocking at Regina Mills’s front door. 

 

“It’s mine,” Regina says evenly, but she can’t quite meet Emma’s eyes as she sits down beside her and opens it. She flips through pages and Emma sees flashes– flashes of herself as a child, in prison, as an adult, in Storybrooke– and then to the very last page, which already features a picture of the two of them on the chaise, looking at the book. 

 

“Oh, my god,” Emma breathes. 

 

Regina turns a page back, smoothing down the paper and touching the picture of Emma with her groceries. “Look,” she says, pointing to a shadow behind the car. “There’s your book thief.” 

 

Whoever it is, Emma can only see a shadow, not a face, but it’s enough to figure out that it’s a man. Not much of a start. But not Regina, either. Not that she’s thinking about her stolen book much at all anymore. “You...you had this? All this time?” 

 

“Since the start of the curse.” Regina is watching her with unreadable eyes, and Emma remembers the park again.

 

“You came to see me once,” she says disbelievingly. “You came to Boston and I thought I dreamed you.” 

 

Now Regina looks embarrassed. “I think...you were just a character in a book to me. I needed to see for myself again that you were real.” She inhales sharply. “I was a bit...too involved in the story. I had to remember that you were the savior, for all the good it did me in the long run.” She rolls her eyes, her tongue dipping out to lick her lips reflectively. 

 

“You were basically my imaginary friend,” Emma murmurs, shaking her head. “I remember losing my first tooth and making plans to catch the–” She freezes, another long-forgotten memory returning. “The tooth fairy,” she says slowly, and Regina looks away. “You sent me that letter.”

 

“Too involved in the story,” Regina mutters again, and Emma stares at her in astonishment, piecing together more mysteries in her mind.

 

“When I was living on the streets...strangers used to come over and offer me a meal or just...  _ Regina _ . Was that you, too?” She can’t believe this. She can’t believe Regina who is hard and unyielding and should  _ hate  _ her hadn’t–

 

“Sometimes,” Regina admits. She pinches the bridge of her nose, taking the book and closing it on her lap. “Coming to terms with you as a character was a lot easier than coming to terms with you as…” She waves helplessly at Emma. “You as a person. It’s still difficult to resolve them in my mind.” 

 

“Tell me about it,” Emma agrees wryly, and Regina looks at her askance.

 

“So your book…”

 

“It’s your story,” Emma murmurs. “Just like I said. Cora to Daniel to Leopold to Snow…” Regina flinches at all four names, and Emma hurries forward, “To…”  _ Wait _ . “To…”  _ Oh, god.  _

 

“It’s not what you think,” Regina says rapidly, alarm in her features as Emma pales. “It wasn’t– I didn’t–”

 

“Henry,” Emma whispers, standing up. She remembers leaving prison with nothing to look forward to but finding her only companion, and flipping through pages that had seemed like a cruel joke. And now she knows that there are no coincidences, and another woman had been flipping through pages across the country at the same time. “You knew before you adopted him. You adopted him  _ because– _ ”

 

Regina stands, too, hands reaching out and then dropping again as though she’s afraid to touch Emma right now. “I’d always wanted a child. If you’ve read– you  _ know  _ that, you know how much I longed for–” She rubs at her temples, and she looks– afraid. Exhausted, too. “But when I saw you were...I swear, it wasn’t some convoluted  _ opportunity _ . My life would have been far simpler if I’d adopted someone else’s child, trust me.” Her eyes are pleading and Emma still doesn’t understand, doesn’t know how she’s supposed to react to any of these revelations. 

 

“Then why Henry? Why did you decide to…”

 

Regina closes her eyes. When she opens them, Emma can’t read them again. “I watched you for years, Emma,” she says carefully. “I saw everything that had brought you to that moment in that prison and I thought you’d– When you decided to put Henry up for adoption, I swore that I wouldn’t let him live the way that you had in the system.” The mask over her eyes recedes, bit by bit, until all that’s left is anguished vulnerability. “I thought it was what you’d want for him.” 

 

Emma stares at her, lips parted and heart pounding, and she takes a step forward. Regina stands very still, exposed in a way that Emma’s never seen her in person before, and Emma reaches out to her. She cradles Regina’s face in her hands, runs a thumb along her jaw and brushes back hair with the tips of her fingers, and Regina whispers, “It was just foolish sentimentality.”

 

_ Foolish sentimentality.  _ Like Emma blinking back tears and wonder and Regina’s skin flushed and then Emma drawn inexorably closer. “You’re exactly what I wanted for him,” she breathes, and Regina leans forward and presses her lips to Emma’s as Emma still cups Regina’s face in her hands. Emma’s mouth falls open with a tiny breath, Regina’s hands resting at the small of Emma’s back and her thumb dipping up below Emma’s shirt to touch her skin. “Emma,” she murmurs.

 

Her fingers are warm, and Emma lets out a choked sob. “Regina,” she whispers in response, kissing her cheeks and her jaw and her neck, sucking at her collarbone until Regina groans and yanks Emma closer, hands squeezing Emma’s ass until she gasps, hips jerking with every motion of Regina’s hands.

 

Regina’s hands still and then move, winding around to Emma’s abdomen, and then she  _ pushes _ . Emma stumbles back, wide-eyed and afraid that this is a dismissal; but Regina follows, shoving her again until Emma’s legs hit the bed and she topples backward onto it. Regina grins, the smirk curling her lips and tugging at something in the pit of Emma’s belly at the same time. 

 

Emma tugs Regina down, flips her over and kisses her again as slender legs slide between hers. Regina’s dress is hitched up to her waist and it isn’t enough, none of it is enough– Regina is yanking Emma’s shirt off, pressing open-mouthed kisses to the thin fabric of her bra, drawing out pebbling nipples as her other hand slides under the bra to knead a breast. Emma throws her head back, kicks off her jeans and grinds helplessly against Regina’s center, tugging uselessly at Regina’s dress to get it  _ off _ .

 

Somehow, eventually, it comes off, along with the last of their clothing. Somehow, Emma pumps her fingers into Regina until Regina is writhing against her hand, snapping out threats and cursing Emma’s past, present, and future as Emma draws out her orgasm. Somehow, Regina winds up in a crouch on the bed, Emma’s legs hooked over her shoulders as Regina’s tongue leaves her a babbling mess. Somehow, they find themselves writhing together in bed, relying on nothing but friction to get off. Emma’s forehead is pressed to Regina’s as they move in tandem, rising and falling and meeting each other halfway with renewed, shuddering gasps. 

 

Emma’s eyes are open, locked on Regina’s, and they come together this time, Regina’s face buried in the curve of Emma’s neck and Emma’s lips pressed to her hair. She wants to memorize this moment– Regina panting into her skin, Regina’s legs wrapped around hers in a vice grip, Regina’s nails scraping into the skin of her back– and the next even more, when Regina slumps at last and pulls Emma down onto her, nuzzling her chest as her eyes drift closed. 

 

Emma wraps an arm around Regina, tugging at the comforter on the bed to wrap around them, but she can’t sleep. Her mind isn’t racing anymore, just heavy with contentment, and Emma brushes a kiss to Regina’s forehead in her sleep and feels the approving rumble against her neck. 

 

It’s funny, really. She’s had a little crush on the character from her book for as long as she can remember, but it had been...different before. Regina had been a  _ character _ , after all, and as much as she’d tended to hero-worship her, it had been more in abstract. Then she’d met her and learned quickly that what had been compelling in a character had been... _ exhausting  _ in reality, until it hadn’t been anymore.

 

And this is different, worlds apart from anything she’d ever dreamed before. Regina in her arms is different, and it takes her what must be hours before she finally tears her eyes off of Regina and disentangles from her to cross the room. Regina rolls into the spot she’d vacated, seeking its warmth, and Emma grabs the book and climbs back into the bed on the other side. Regina shifts back to her, curling against her thigh, and Emma runs her fingers through Regina’s hair and opens the book. 

 

Even after months of seeing herself in her own book, it’s still overwhelming to flip through pages and see herself as a child, to see so many figures from her past whom she’d never expected to see again. She reads through page after page, and she sees each story through the lens of Regina, reading about her future nemesis. 

 

How could she have cared? Each story seems more inane than the next, each narrative childish and so removed from the fairytale-gone-wrong that had been Regina’s own story. She can’t believe that Regina would have ever found her as compelling as she’d found Regina, not when her life is laid out like this. 

 

But Regina had kept reading for years, had been as drawn to her book as Emma had been her own, and that’s… 

 

Exhausted, her mind struggling to make sense of the impossible, she succumbs at last to the heavy blankets and soft bed and Regina’s body pressed to hers. In the morning, it’ll all make sense. She’s sure of it.

 

* * *

 

Regina stirs and blinks groggily, squinting in the sunshine flooding the room. Emma is curled up beside her, an arm flung over her hips and her forehead pressed to Regina’s shoulder, and her eyes are already open. She regards Regina with a sleepy smile, and Regina feels fear, fluttering in her heart as though she’s already lost this. Everything good she has is lost, eventually.

 

But Emma doesn’t move from her position, keeps regarding Regina with that smile, and Regina leans over and kisses her forehead tentatively. “Good morning,” she says, her voice hoarse and thick with sleep. Emma catches her lips before she can pull away, kisses her with drowsy contentment and slips a leg between hers until Regina’s breathless again, a hand squeezing Emma’s breast gently and another tracing the features of her face. 

 

“A good morning,” Emma agrees, slipping beneath the covers, and Regina presses a hand to the back of her head and writhes against her mouth in choked silence. They shower together, incapable of surrendering any of the intimacy that they had achieved the night before, and Regina lathers soap along Emma’s body and watches muscles beneath her skin jump at Regina’s touch. 

 

She threads her fingers through Emma’s and Emma laughs, suddenly, drawing Regina back up to her. “I just remembered,” she says, ducking to the side of the shower spray. “I once used magic to save you when I was a kid.” Regina stares at her, searching her memory for a matching scenario. “With Jefferson?” Emma prompts, and Regina remembers clutching the book, a surge of energy from within it striking a gun before it could discharge its bullet. “I thought I’d been dreaming.” 

 

Regina scoffs, feeling warmth tinge her skin as Emma traces light fingernails against her palm. “You hardly saved me. I had that under control.” When she looks up, Emma is laughing at her. “I  _ did _ ,” she insists. “Far more than you did your  _ stalker _ .” 

 

“Stalker?” Emma says, puzzled, and they’ve still got enough time before Henry wakes up for Regina to drag Emma from the shower, dressing her in the most casual clothes she has and then climbing onto the bed to flip through her book. 

 

She finds the old pictures from just after Lily, pointing out the tall, thin man lurking in the background. “I didn’t know what to do,” she admits, remembering too late that this story doesn’t paint her quite as heroically as she’d thought. “I had to get you away from him, so I called the police and–” 

 

“I’ve seen this man before,” Emma says, and Regina’s finger freezes on the page. Emma’s brow furrows. “No, I’ve definitely–” She flips ahead, through pages and pages until she’s in Storybrooke, and then flips back a page before Henry had come to Boston. “Here,” she says triumphantly, stabbing a finger at a picture of a man sitting beside her at a bar. “And I thought I’d known him even then.” 

 

“No,” Regina says disbelievingly. “He couldn’t have followed you for  _ years _ . That’s impossible–” There’s something about him that strikes a chord within her, too, that feels eerily familiar in a discomforting way that has nothing to do with her book. 

 

“Regina? Regina!” Emma says urgently, and Regina is bewildered until she catches her own reflection in the mirror. Her hands are against her temples, almost clawing into them unconsciously, and she has to focus to pull them away from head. “What’s wrong? What have you–” 

 

“I don’t know,” Regina says, her heart pounding. “I don’t…” She stares down at the book, a sour taste in her mouth as Emma draws her hands into hers. “I don’t know what just happened.” 

 

“Well,  _ something  _ did, and I’m not going to–” Emma’s eyes widen. “Wait,” she says, her hands squeezing Regina’s in a vice grip. “Wait, we thought that someone took my book to see something in it. What if it wasn’t that? What if it was someone who didn’t want  _ me _ to see something in it instead?” She leans forward, eyes sharp as she studies Regina’s face. “Did anything unusual happen yesterday?” 

 

“Not that I can remember.” There had been the encounter with Henry, of course, but that hadn’t been out of the ordinary. She’d done busy work and walked home and talked to Emma and Henry and others, but it had been a fairly typical weekday.

 

“What about the Graham tape? I heard you finally got a hold of it.” Emma grins, sheepish. “I was going to break into your office to see it if you’d still been pissed at me today.” 

 

Regina rolls her eyes upward. “Of course you were. You wouldn’t have found anything, though. There was nothing of note on the tape.” 

 

“ _ Regina _ .” Sometime during that assertion, her hands had escaped Emma’s and gone back to clutching her head. Regina tears them away, holding them out limply, away from her body, terrified. Emma seizes them again, very pale. “Nothing of note,” she repeats.

 

“Not that I can remember,” Regina says again, and she’s nauseous with fear at her body, betraying her so easily. 

 

She thinks of the last few magical ingredients she has stored in her vault, saved for a rainy day. Once, she thought she might use them to forget Emma, after Henry had been born. She hadn’t been able to bear that and had settled for putting the book away instead. She thinks they might be enough to force out whichever memories she’d forgotten, at least.

 

Her hands move to her head, unbidden, and Emma catches them before they can do any more damage and holds them together. “Let me make you breakfast,” she says gently, her eyes bright with determination. “Then we can figure out the rest.” 

 

* * *

 

Henry doesn’t question Emma in the kitchen, flipping blueberry pancakes and letting a hand land on Regina’s stiff shoulders almost casually. He just shrugs and sits down, dousing his pancakes with maple syrup and mumbling, “Good morning,” as he shovels them into his mouth.

 

It’s so fucking domestic that Emma wants to sob, almost as much as she’d wanted to when Regina’s eyes had gone black and her hands had clawed at her head as though desperate to get something  _ out _ . Two scenes; one so utterly  _ right  _ and one with the kind of wrongness that had put Graham in the hospital. This can’t last, and they’ve already gotten their first warning driven home. 

 

She walks with Regina to Henry’s bus stop, her heart clenching when he hugs his mother goodbye and Regina leans into it with her eyes drifting shut and her lips at the crown of his forehead. Then Henry turns to her, throws his arms around her and says, “Bye, Emma,” and she can’t breathe at how much she wants–

 

It’s a relief when Regina is brisk and businesslike once Henry’s bus leaves. “I have an idea,” she says, and leads Emma to her vault. Emma lurks behind her, watching as she mixes glowing liquids together and barely talks, and she doesn’t know what she can do when Regina is so driven and closed off that she might as well be untouchable. She knows Regina is afraid, has seen it in her eyes, but Regina doesn’t look at her or talk as she pours vials into beakers and makes them smoke. 

 

“Regina–” she says, and gets a quelling look for her trouble. 

 

“I’m really in the middle of something delicate right now,” Regina snaps, and Emma knows her well enough to catch the way her voice turns scratchy and raw midway through the retort. 

 

“Okay,” Emma says, biting her lip, and she watches Regina work in silence. 

 

Regina pauses and twists around, her hand still wrapped around a smoking beaker like some kind of hot mad scientist. “I can’t trust my own mind right now,” she says, her eyes flashing and defensive. “I don’t know what I can’t remember– I can’t trust my own  _ hands  _ right now, and you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little tense because of it.” She shuts her eyes and twists back.

 

Emma says, “Okay,” again, uncertain.

 

“What do you want me to say?” Regina demands, and she doesn’t seem to register Emma’s response. “That I’m terrified? That for all the times that my body was taken away from me by…by those who’ve tried to own me, I’ve always had my mind? And I can’t–” Her voice cracks. “I can’t–” 

 

Emma reaches for her and Regina pulls away, her hands trembling around the beaker as she lifts it to her lips. “I have to do this,” she says, glaring into the potion. “It’s the only way…” She tips back her head and drinks it, swallowing it all down in one gulp.

 

Immediately, she begins to convulse, her eyes flying in every direction and her limbs seizing up and then flying free. Emma grabs onto her arms, trying to keep her from hurting herself, and touches pure desolation instead. It’s that same tar-like sensation that had felt so wrong about Graham, like reaching into a pit of piranha that’ll chew her down to bone as well, and she recoils automatically, repulsed by this blackest of magic as Regina quakes in front of her.

 

She can’t leave her to it. Emma reaches for her again, gagging on the vileness of whatever had consumed Regina, and she holds her hands even as her own tremble with Regina’s, wraps her arms around Regina and holds her against her. She’s gasping with tears that aren’t about sorrow or frustration or anything other than revulsion at the exposure, but she doesn’t let go until Regina stops gagging and is limp in her arms.

 

“Regina? Regina!” she says, panicked but afraid to let her go to check on her, and the body she holds to her shifts slightly. “Regina, oh god–”

 

“The shadows,” Regina croaks out, stumbling away from Emma and sliding to the floor. She looks as she had when Emma had left her here a week ago, shaken and livid and overcome. “The shadows took my memories of them.” 

 

“The man?” 

 

“Yes,” Regina whispers, and when she looks up, her eyes are gleaming with tears. “I don’t know– how many times has he done it to you, too? How can we stop a shadow?” She stares down at her own shadow, stretching across the floor in the flickering candlelight. “I used the last of my magic for that potion.” 

 

Emma crouches on the ground opposite her, waiting in silence as Regina speaks again. “I thought...I thought I’d created myself a kingdom in this land, one that could never revolt against me. But this is a tomb.” 

 

“No,” Emma says, stricken at Regina’s fear. 

 

She shouldn’t have worried. Regina’s eyes darken, grim and angry, and she agrees, “No. I will not be hunted like prey in my own town. I won’t bend to  _ shadows _ .” She stands up, still shaky, and squeezes the beaker in her hands hard enough that it shatters in her hand. “And I won’t have anyone menacing my town but me.” 

 

Emma’s whole self is awash in fondness she can’t describe. “Damn straight,” she says, and when Regina pauses to kiss her, a smile still on her lips, she can feel the ugliness that had nearly swallowed them whole fade away from her fingers.

 

* * *

 

By nightfall, Emma has a plan and Regina is furious. Regina has revisited the memories of the encounter with the man too many times today, too many times with Emma’s hand wrapped around her wrist as she listens and struggles to grasp what Regina herself can’t grasp. “So we can’t go after the shadow, but we can go after the man,” she says, perched on Regina’s desk and glaring hard at the paused tape of Graham’s attack. “We just don’t let the shadows attack first.” 

 

“Why hasn’t he attacked before now?” Regina wonders. “Why aren’t you grabbing your head whenever we talk about him? What kept you safe?” 

 

“I don’t know if I was,” Emma says bleakly. “Maybe I just built up an immunity. I read through some of the book and I couldn’t even remember– who the hell is Ingrid?” she demands, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I have holes in my memory, too. I just don’t know if it’s natural, or...in response to trauma, or–” She moves her hand along the desk, watching a dim shadow move with it.

 

Regina rests her hand over Emma’s. “I would have seen if you’d been attacked,” she reminds her, and her heart twists gently in her chest. “I’ve been...well. I’ve been here for a long time.” She’d been drawn to Emma in wildly varying ways over the years, and they’d had that single gap of time since filled, and she’s never seen any sign of the man catching up to Emma.

 

“So he can’t get me,” Emma decides, her mind made up, and new fear claws at Regina at Emma’s determination to  _ protect _ .

 

Everything good she has is lost, eventually.

 

“Don’t be an idiot,” she scoffs. “There’s no courage in throwing yourself at the mercy of an unstoppable demon on a  _ theory _ . He could have just been biding his time. This could be him backed against the corner, and you’ll be next.” 

 

“You got a better idea?” Emma points out reasonably, and Regina doesn’t have a response to that but to seethe. 

 

And again, the certainty that none of this fleeting joy can last.

 

Emma takes her hand, raises Regina’s wrist in hers palm-up, and presses a kiss to it. Regina can feel her resistance waning with Emma’s every touch, the longing for her stronger than the fear. “You’re a fool,” she sniffs again, and Emma presses soft lips to her skin until Regina’s eyes drift closed and Emma eases herself off the mayor’s desk to climb onto the chair and kiss her properly.

 

She holds Emma to her, knees on either side of her on her chair and Emma with her hands at the nape of Regina’s neck so Regina’s face is lifted to her. They spring apart only when the door slams open and one of the heads of the Storybrooke chapter of the Small Business Association storms in with a grievance. He doesn’t notice the way that Emma pulls away from Regina and then leans against the wall of the office, staring him down as he yells at the mayor.

 

Regina hears him out and then dismisses him coolly, and then there’s a slew of meetings to deal with. Emma remains in her position against the wall, arms folded as she glares down anyone who looks at her curiously. “Are you sure you don’t want to have this meeting somewhere else?” Sidney asks, cautious to the last.

 

“She’d find it all out anyway,” Regina says, heaving a long-suffering sigh, and Emma grins for the first time since they’d left the vault. She can almost feel Emma wanting to reach for her– or maybe she only wants it as much as Emma does, craving her touch already as though she might wither up and die without it.

 

She’d spent years and years watching a child, desperate to hate her or see her as the enemy. She’d never once imagined that ten years later, when the adult version would appear in her life, she’d be the one helpless around her.  _ Love is weakness _ , Mother had said when she’d killed Daniel, and Regina had never believed it as much as she does now, her whole heart distracted and ravaged just at the thought of Emma consumed by the shadows.

 

But then there are no more meetings, Henry is tucked into bed with a very bewildered Ruby babysitting, and Emma loops her thumbs into her jeans and waits for Regina on the porch. Regina peers out the window at her, anxious as she checks her hair again, and she ducks outside as quickly as she can to join her. “You shouldn’t be waiting in the dark,” she says. The darkness had been her friend before it had consumed her, had been  _ hers  _ as much as she’d eschewed the light. Today, the darkness is hollow and empty, a danger to Emma Swan as much as it had ever been a home to her. 

 

Emma shrugs, sauntering down the steps of the porch to the sidewalk, and Regina is enraged again. “ _ Stop  _ it,” she hisses. “Take this seriously, for fuck’s sake. I know you haven’t dealt in demons before, but–” 

 

Emma turns around, and Regina sees steel on her face. “I’m dead serious about this,” she says, her voice low and measured. Regina watches her, impatient and dubious. Emma says, “I’m going to meet up with this shadow guy and I’m going to destroy him before he ever lays another finger on you again. Got it?” 

 

“I don’t need your protection,” Regina snaps, and she’d rather throw herself into the shadows again then watch Emma consumed by it. “I know you think that we– I know that you think your book has given you this insight on me, but all it’s done is made you forget where this ends.” 

 

“Where this ends,” Emma repeats, arching an eyebrow.

 

“Your destiny is to  _ destroy  _ me, Emma,” Regina says tightly. “You’re here to break my curse, not throw yourself to the wolves to protect me. And that doesn’t change no matter how much you want to  _ fuck  _ me,” she bites out, desperate for Emma to  _ listen _ .

 

Emma laughs.  _ Laughs _ , shaking her head and almost affectionately mocking. “And you’re telling me this in some really twisted attempt to protect  _ me _ , so what does that make you?” 

 

Regina surges forward and kisses her, feels Emma’s breath against her lips and her hands locking with hers. “You’re being a fool,” she gasps against Emma’s lips, and Emma just kisses her back and squeezes her hand again.

 

And when they part, they’re being watched. 

 

He’s leaning against a street sign reading YIELD, which he probably thinks is funnier than it is. Regina’s blood boils, something primal within her recoiling at the sight of him, but she stands her ground. “How long have you been following Emma?” she demands. “What do you want? Why are you here?” Emma rocks back on her heels, fists clenched. 

 

He smiles thinly. “I’ve been waiting a long time to see both of you again,” he says, and strikes.

 

If Regina hadn’t been so acutely aware of the shadows, she might not have seen them when they’d started to move. The man is still speaking, though she can’t hear what he’s saying, and Emma is charging forward as though to get on with it and punch him in the face. She discharges her gun once, and the man’s gut is punctured– thin air– and then reforms behind it. She doesn’t see the shadows rising, and Regina turns to face them on her own.

 

She can handle this. Graham is a babbling mess, but she’s  _ fine _ , and she’s dealt with much worse than a few shadows in the dark. The longer it takes Emma to do something stupidly heroic, the better. 

 

She focuses on every memory that she can, holds every impression of the past day close to her– Henry’s smile, his arms around her before the bus in the morning. Blueberry pancakes that are just a touch too bland. The rush of control and order that accompanies every meeting. Emma’s forehead pressed to hers and her eyes bright when Regina had kissed her. The shadows can’t take them away from her, not now. Not ever.

 

There’s a shout from behind her as the shadows climb her body, and she thinks,  _ Emma _ , and is afraid for her. Emma doesn’t know the shadows as she does. Emma is light, and light is consumed by darkness.

 

Emma is running to her, hands outstretched to the shadows, and the man chuckles as the shadows reach for her in turn.

 

But something is different. The shadows  _ don’t  _ touch her, seem to wash over her and leave her unscathed, and Emma stares in shock as they swarm over her and return to Regina, digging deep within her. “No,” she says, and Regina wants to sob in relief. “No!” 

 

And then Regina only wants to sob, because the shadows are eating into her, and this is the end–

 

A spotlight blazes. 

 

It comes from above, bright as daylight– no, bright as the heavy-duty flashlight Regina keeps in the garage for emergencies. It’s shining onto her, chasing shadows away ruthlessly, winding quick circles around both Emma and Regina until there are no more shadows. And then the man is gone, the street lit again and Emma and Regina panting on the sidewalk in front of the house.

 

Henry pokes his head out the window, keeping the flashlight directly on them. “That was really dumb,” he says. “We should talk.” 

 

* * *

 

For the second time in two nights, Emma is being ushered into the Mills mansion by a Mills carrying a book. This time, though, it’s to the living room, Henry sitting opposite them as Regina leans against the arm of the couch and Emma’s eyes flicker over her, searching for more damage done. 

 

“I’m fine,” Regina murmurs, but her eyes are flickering closed as they wait for Henry. “The shadows didn’t get to my head this time.” 

 

“This time?” Henry repeats, looking alarmed. “You met the Shade before?” He flips through his book, brow furrowed.

 

“He’s been following Emma for years,” Regina says tiredly. “Henry, don’t you think it’s time we saw your book?” 

 

Henry bites his lip. “I don’t know how much I should show you–”

 

“ _ Henry _ .” Regina shakes her head. “Haven’t we had enough secrecy and lies in this family for now?” For a moment, before she thinks about it sensibly, Emma thinks she’s a part of  _ this family _ , and her heart is like a burning hope in her chest. “The book says your name on it. But it isn’t your story.” 

 

“It sort of is,” he says, still cagey. “It’s sort of like a letter, I guess.” 

 

And he tells them at last. Regina turns through pages of Emma and Regina at odds, fighting over Henry and the curse and each other, Emma leaning against Regina’s shoulder as she stares at the two of them fighting in the book. Regina tries to poison Emma and Henry is caught in the crossfire. Regina and Emma work together, and Henry is saved and the curse is broken. Regina reaches out to Henry and Emma reaches out to Regina and Neal comes to Storybrooke, Cora comes to Storybrooke, Henry is kidnapped and they go to Neverland together.

 

“I didn’t think you’d work together so quickly in this reality,” Henry says, eyeing them suspiciously. “It took so long in the book.” 

 

In the book, Regina gives Emma a new life with Henry, the two of them standing at the edge of town with Emma’s hand clasped in Regina’s. In the book, they return allies, and Regina has a sister that has Emma unsurprised. “What?” Regina asks, eyeing her suspiciously.

 

“You don’t remember,” Emma says, recalling a day between sisters that had been rather a dream for younger Emma. A sister appearing out of nowhere, only to be cruelly torn away and her memories erased– it had been second only to the dreams of Snow White and Prince Charming reappearing to save her. “Later,” she says meekly under Henry’s disapproving glare.

 

They read on. There’s the mysterious Ingrid again, and it’s another  _ later  _ that has them both looking grimly at each other. There are other Disney villains, an improbable Cruella De Vil, and then, suddenly, an author.

 

“ _ The _ author?” 

 

“Not the author,” Henry says, and they read on as Henry becomes the author, and the Dark One’s power is unleashed over Storybrooke. Regina sighs long-sufferingly as Emma takes the darkness within her in the story, and a dagger falls to the ground as a shadow stretches behind it.

 

Henry clears his throat. “The Shade broke free then. I don’t know exactly how. Emma, you were busy trying to control the Dark One and Mom was focused on helping and you didn’t find the Shade until he started stealing minds and memories and souls. And by then, no one believed you. Everyone thought it was Emma at first, and that you were…” He flushes, looking away from the book. “Protecting her.” 

 

“Oh,” Emma whispers, turning the page and seeing the picture of the two of them, a bit older and more worn down, wrapped in each other’s embrace.

 

Regina leans in, Emma’s chin brushing against her shoulder, and says, “That's absurd,” without any heartfelt feeling behind it. 

 

“Yeah, must be...artistic license or something.” Emma chuckles nervously, resting her chin against Regina’s shoulder as she flips onward. 

 

Henry looks at them and wrinkles his nose. “Ew,” he says, and they both wince as he goes on. 

 

“Before long, it was too late, and so many people were gone. Mary Margaret and David, Belle and Zelena, even Neal,” Henry says as Regina keeps turning pages. There are more pictures of them, curled up together or plotting or gathered around Henry, and in each one they look a little wearier. “You couldn’t stop the Shade. You wanted to run from the town, but you couldn’t leave while there was still a fighting chance. And around this time, Rumplestiltskin made me an offer.” 

 

“Henry,” Regina says, shaking her head. “Oh, no.” 

 

“It was the only choice,” Henry protests. “He wanted to save Belle as much as I did Storybrooke. And he thought he had a way to reset Storybrooke and send it back to when it was first created.” They both have enough knowledge of Rumplestiltskin to raise their eyes at him, still dubious. Henry sighs. “It’s not like he could  _ do  _ anything. Or stop it from happening again. He needed me for that.” 

 

“Because you were the author,” Emma says slowly. “You wrote these books?” 

 

Henry nods. “I don’t remember any of it, of course. I just know what’s in my book. The other Henry wrote three books before the Shade attacked and Rumple’s plan was set into motion, and I guess you both woke up with yours once Storybrooke and the curse were reset.” He nods to the book sitting beside Regina on the couch. “It’s supposed to anchor you. He can’t take away your memories if they’re all inside of a book.”

 

Regina turns to the last page of Henry’s book. Unlike the others, it has a proper ending, the three books side by side as Henry hunches over them. 

 

_ Three books were written to save Storybrooke. One, for Henry Mills, of a world where nothing remains. And two for the town’s saviors, each one’s story in the hands of the other. _

 

_ For who better to protect Emma’s soul than Regina Mills? And who better to protect Regina’s soul than Emma Swan? _

 

“It’s why the Shade couldn’t hurt you,” Henry says, looking at Emma, then the book beside Regina. “Because Mom’s book anchors your soul.” 

  
Emma pales, feeling suddenly sick. “But then what happens if the Shade has the book? What kind of protection does Regina have?” And Henry can only stare at them with rising dismay as Regina stiffens and Emma’s stomach sinks down, down, down.


	8. Chapter 8

“No,” Emma says again. They’re in Regina’s bedroom once more, ostensibly returning the book to its place as Henry peers out the window downstairs, searching for shadows that move. Every light in the house is on. Regina is pushing every thought she has aside in favor of this fight. “Absolutely not.” 

 

“So you’re going to do this alone? How well did that go when you went after the Shade earlier?” Regina points out reasonably. “Have you ever faced a demon before? Have you ever cast a spell? What can you do with a gun but blow holes into something that isn’t even solid?” 

 

“I’ll figure it out. I’m not risking your  _ soul _ for backup,” Emma growls out. She’s pacing, her hands clenching and unclenching, and Regina watches her warily. “I’m not letting you jump into something you can’t win.” 

 

“You’ve read my story, Emma.” Regina curls her fingers around a knee, staring out the window into the night. “All I’ve ever done is jump into battles I can’t win. And in the end, I  _ did  _ win.” 

 

“Not forever,” Emma says grimly, and for the first time, Regina looks at her and sees the savior lurking beneath her eyes. 

 

“Not forever,” she concedes. There’s no use in denying it now, not when Henry and Emma know everything there is to know, and neither of them will accept the curse much longer. The Shade is only a reprieve. 

 

Emma smiles at her, and sometimes Regina can’t comprehend how Emma could have grown up with every ugly piece of her and still smile at her like this. Sometimes she can’t comprehend that a book about her could bring someone closer instead of driving them away. “Was it really so bad?” Emma says, sitting down beside her at last. “In Henry’s book, I mean. Was it really so bad?” 

 

When the curse had broken and everything had fallen apart. Henry’s book had painted a lonely picture for her, months of desperation to connect with Henry, with Emma, even with Snow. She wonders how different it might be in this reality, if it is at all. “Some of it,” she says truthfully. “Some of it felt like...we never really have peace.” She’d used to dream of peace, of a quiet estate away from her mother with children and laughter and someone who’d loved her.

 

“We could make our own peace,” Emma murmurs, and she looks up pleadingly. “I want to find that peace, but not based on a lie. And I want you to be alive to see it.” Ah, so they’re back to  _ this _ . Emma is unrelenting. “I just found you,” she whispers, and Regina  _ won’t _ , she won’t be moved into surrendering the fight because Emma’s eyes are watery and lost.

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says stubbornly, and Emma laces her fingers through Regina’s and kisses her, a hand reaching under her by instinct and lifting her up until she’s shifting Regina against her headboard and her teeth are tugging at Regina’s bottom lip. There is the vague awareness that this might be the last kiss, that the shadows will take Regina but she’s going to go out fighting, and she squeezes her hand against Emma’s as Emma presses it against the headboard, palm to palm as she attacks Regina’s neck.

 

There’s a click, and Emma kisses Regina’s lips one more time, this one regretful as Regina freezes in betrayal. The hand that Emma had been holding is encircled by a sturdy handcuff, its partner latched to her bedpost. “Emma,” Regina hisses, shoving her back with her free hand. “Emma, what the  _ hell _ .” 

 

Emma presses her lips together, apologetic. “I can’t lose you,” she says, backing off the bed. Regina can only stare at her in horrified betrayal. Emma looks down. “I’ll be back soon, okay?” she says, a flush of guilt creeping up her face. “I promise.” 

 

“No. No,” Regina says, louder. “ _ Henry _ !” 

 

But Henry doesn’t come. Emma tucks Regina’s book under her arm and flees the room, and Regina struggles against the cuff in a fury, bathed in light as the door slams shut downstairs.

 

* * *

 

God, she’s going to come back to a shitstorm. It’s worth it, though, if it means that Regina is safe. Regina’s never going to forgive her for cuffing her, let alone for her companion.

 

“I’ll be fine,” Henry says, shining his spotlight around them. “I told you, my book is my anchor, too. I’m...ninety-nine percent sure of it.” 

 

Emma looks at him askance. “You said you were positive.” 

 

“That’s  _ basically  _ positive.” Henry takes a step forward, and Emma has to quicken her pace to catch up. “Besides, you need me. You were gonna run out here with no plan and no way to beat the Shade.”

 

“That’s not true!” Emma protests.

 

Henry flashes his light so it’s directly in Emma’s eyes, his own face dubious. “Really? What’s your plan?”

 

Emma purses her lips. “Okay, you know what? I don’t need a plan. I’m more of a… thinking-on-my-feet kind of girl. I’ll go in, take on the Shade, and figure out where to go from there. I’ve got a gun and I’ve got my fists and that’s all I’ve ever needed before, so–” She stops. Henry is smiling at her, and it’s the kind of smile that makes her stomach flip and something inside of her, long since quieted, say,  _ Run.  _ “What?” 

 

Henry shakes his head, still smiling at her. “I’m really glad I brought you here, Emma,” he says.

 

“Because I’m the savior?” Emma offers, straightening. “I told you, I have this under control–”

 

“Because you’re Emma,” Henry says, and he walks ahead, shining his flashlight in every corner of the street as Emma slows down, watching him go with a muted sort of wonder caught in her throat. 

 

She follows him as he turns the corner, finally catching up as they make their way down Main Street. “I don’t understand,” Henry says. “The Shade’s been following you for twenty-eight years. He went after Graham when Graham started to see him, but he’s been with you the rest of the time. Why wouldn’t he come out now?” Henry wonders. “It’s not like you have a plan.” 

 

Emma shoots him a dirty look. He grins, unintimidated. “Look, kid. First of all, I don’t  _ need _ –” She swallows her response. “The Shade went after Regina last night. I don’t think he’s specifically targeting me.” 

 

“But he can’t go after Mom tonight,” Henry points out. “We made sure the whole house was protected. So where is he?” 

 

* * *

 

Regina is livid, frantic, and finally planning the savior’s untimely death again.  _ About fucking time _ . How dare she. How dare–

 

She inhales slowly, then exhales, struggling for calm. Somewhere out there, Emma is hunting down a creature she can’t possibly handle, and Henry is...with her? She’s going to  _ kill  _ Emma Swan. 

 

So calm is elusive.

 

She yanks at her hand again, scrabbles at it with fingers that scratch her skin but can’t do a thing about the cuff. She isn’t going to let someone else murder Emma before she gets a chance at her, that’s for certain. How  _ stupid  _ and  _ noble  _ and  _ obnoxious  _ can one woman be–

 

The house is flooded with light, but she’s never felt more like a child locked in a dark room, helpless and blind and afraid. Emma and Henry are out of their depth, and she wants to be there with them, even if she dies in the process. The shadows can swallow her whole, but she’s determined to cut through them in the process, to choke them until there’s nothing left to hurt the boy and the woman behind her.

 

She closes her eyes in despair and dreams faster than she would have expected to, dreams of Henry as a baby in her arms and dreams of flipping through the book that’s her story as it fades away. She has vivid dreams, each that fills her with more aching than the last. 

 

In one, the sky is quiet and the night is clear, and Emma is curled onto a swing in her backyard. Henry is stretched out on a patio chair, reading a book, and Regina turns back to the swing. Emma crooks a finger, grinning impishly as Regina moves closer. She’s mouthing something, something that sends a shiver down Regina’s spine, and Regina takes another step forward until she’s standing in front of Emma and leaning forward, caught in Emma’s orbit and in a perfect moment, encapsulated. 

 

Emma’s hand closes around Regina’s wrist, and Regina looks up into her eyes and then steps back, alarmed. Emma’s eyes are black– no,  _ empty _ , pits of nothingness in which Regina can see only the night sky, and she can’t move as Emma’s eyes widen and widen until there’s nothing left to her at all.

 

When she wakes up with a gasp, there’s still a gentle hand at her wrist and she can’t see. “Emma?” she says faintly. “Emma!” The hand is working at her cuff, swift and delicate, and she’s still blinded, something obstructing her vision–

 

No. 

 

She twists and she can see the window, see streetlamps lighting the road and other houses with glowing windows. Her vision isn’t obstructed. Someone’s cut the power in her house. 

 

And as her eyes adjust to the faint light from the window, she can finally see who.

 

He’s somehow larger now, barely solid, half smoke and shadow as he pops the handcuff free at last. Regina strikes out at him; once, twice, thrice, and her palm hits thick air, sending trails of smoke wafting through her room. She launches herself from the bed the moment she can, hurtles through him and into a mass of shadows on the opposite side of the room.

 

_ No _ . She fumbles through to where she knows her dresser is and finds an old matchbook in a corner, a shadow pulling at her as she swipes a match and lights it. She holds it close, watches the shadow flicker and move away, and then grabs the shirt that Emma had left on her floor and sets it on fire. 

 

And it  _ works _ , for blessed moments, long enough for her to swing it at the shadows and flee the room. She hangs onto it as the fire crawls across it, hurtles down the stairs and leaves a trail of fire on the steps as she runs for the door.

 

The shirt splits in half, and the burning embers fall to the ground with the ashy remains of Regina’s torch. Leaving a wall of fire behind her, she stumbles outside.

 

She falls over the threshold, and never lands. “A valiant attempt,” the Shade says, leaning against a pillar on the porch. “But you can't escape the shadows.” 

 

And fire burns behind her as dark shadows draw around her, stealing away her breath and the final surge of hope. 

 

* * *

 

They’ve circled the town once already, traipsed through the woods chasing shadows that wound up being squirrels and ducked into a few stores because of mysterious movements within that had proven to be nothing. Henry is full of boundless enthusiasm, still squinting into corners and positive that this is a good sign. “He’s hiding from us,” he decides as they walk down Main Street. “He knows he can’t hurt us and he’s afraid. We can take him!” 

 

“If we can  _ find _ him,” Emma says tiredly. “I didn’t risk your mom’s wrath to screw up our big confrontation.”

 

“You won’t,” Henry says, confident to the last. He peers up at Emma, chewing on his lip. She blinks at him, bemused at the sudden nervousness as he asks, “So...you and my mom.” 

 

“It’s not…” Emma’s voice trails off. There’s little point in denying it to Henry, who’s seen more of them than they have. “It’s new,” she says finally. “I don’t know what it is yet.”

 

Henry’s brow furrows. “Are you in love with her?”

 

“Slow down, kid,” Emma says hastily, but her skin prickles with renewed longing for Regina, right here beside her to deal with Henry’s curiosity. She doesn’t regret keeping Regina out of harm’s way, but she misses her desperately right now. “I...care about her.” 

 

Henry studies her for a moment and then nods, satisfied with something he doesn’t explain to Emma. “That’s good,” he says decisively, and then, “Do you think the Shade is out by the town line? Maybe he’s running.” 

 

“I doubt it,” Emma says, relieved at the distraction. “We can check it out, though. Hang on, I want to swing past your house again–” She freezes. Across the street, down a familiar block, a single building’s lights flicker and die.

 

Henry asks, “What is it?” but Emma has already taken off at a run, racing down the street as panic freezes in her veins. It can’t be. She’s been so focused on protecting and fighting and  _ Regina _ , and the Shade has instead targeted–

 

“Mary Margaret!” she’s shouting as she tears up the stairs of the dark apartment building. There are people in the halls, shuffling out with flashlights to see what the blackout and ensuing commotion are all about. She shoves past them on the stairs, Henry bounding behind her, and she can’t breathe, she can’t open that door and see–

 

–Mary Margaret with a flashlight in her hand, blinking out at Emma in bewilderment. “Emma? Are you alright?” 

 

Emma flies at her, presses hands against her face and stares frantically into her eyes. Mary Margaret stares back, still confused, the flashlight in her hand barely illuminating her at all. “It’s just a blackout,” Mary Margaret says, patting Emma on the arm. “Between this and that plumbing failure last week, I think we need a better super.” She shakes her head and then blinks at Emma again. “Emma?” 

 

A tentative hand reaches for Emma’s where it’s still pressed to Mary Margaret’s cheek, and Emma can feel her hand go limp in Mary Margaret’s. She can feel something trapped in her throat, stinging at her eyes, wet and awful and so relieved. Mary Margaret hasn’t been taken by the Shade. She still has her– her–

 

Borne of fear and little more, Emma is babbling what must seem like incoherence a moment later. “There’s a creature in the shadows. A Shade. I thought he stole your soul,  _ god _ , he’s everywhere and the lights were out and, oh god, Mary Margaret–”

 

Mary Margaret wraps arms around her, soothing and motherly, and Emma sinks against her and nearly sobs. “It’s okay,” she murmurs, and it’s as though the warning has passed right through her, in one ear and gone to dust a moment later. “I’m here.”

 

“I’m here,” echoes another breathless voice a moment later, and Henry comes to a halt outside the apartment, his spotlight illuminating the room around them. “Is she okay?”

 

Mary Margaret squeezes Emma one more time and Emma can’t quite stand when she releases her, just leans against the doorpost and keeps one hand braced against it. “Henry,” she says, frowning. “Does Regina know you’re out this late?”    
  


_ Regina _ . For a single moments, Emma hadn’t thought about Regina, and now she returns to her with dawning horror. There’s no doubt in her mind that the Shade had killed her apartment’s power, not to take Mary Margaret but as a _ warning _ , or...a diversion.

 

She’s leaping to her feet again, tearing out the door once more as Henry follows her back out with a loud sigh, and then she doesn’t hear anything but the pulse pounding in her ears and Regina’s  _ Emma, what the hell?  _ when Emma had cuffed her to her bed, defenseless. 

 

Emma hurtles down one street, then the next, Henry puffing beside her. He’s since given up on keeping his spotlight trained on the space ahead of them and it flashes up and down wildly as his hands move in a run, surging forward with just as much speed as Emma has. “Mom. You think Mom is in trouble?” he demands as they turn onto Mifflin. The upstairs is dark, but there’s light flickering downstairs, and Emma is terrified. “Emma, talk to me!” 

 

Emma throws open the door and is met with a wall of flames, hot enough to singe the hair she doesn’t pull back in time. Henry shouts, “Mom!  _ Mom! _ ” with so much horror that Emma realizes just in time and yanks him away from the door before he can run in. 

 

She puts her phone in his hands. “Call 911,” she orders. “Stay on the lawn.” She glances up at the tree outside Henry’s bedroom window, eyes narrowing in calculation. It’s still dark. The fire hasn’t risen upstairs yet. “I’m going in.” 

 

They say that people can accomplish impossible feats when a loved one is in danger, and Emma isn’t using  _ that  _ word but she’s shimmying up the tree like she’s done it a hundred times before, swinging onto a branch like she’s at home up here and moving hand-over-hand toward the open window. The branch creaks and then cracks, dropping slowly but not yet detached, and Emma jumps before she falls and catches onto the window with the tips of her fingers. 

 

She swings there helplessly for a moment, scrabbling for a better hold, and her feet press against the side of the house and find purchase. She isn’t thinking about falling. She isn’t thinking about anything but getting to Regina in time. 

 

She tears the screen out of the window and hoists herself in, tumbling into the room and coughing in the thick smoke that has filled the upper floor of the house. “Regina,” she chokes out. “Regina, oh god–”

 

The Shade must have given up on her soul and decided to eliminate her altogether. Emma crawls through the hall, squinting through black, billowing smoke, and she drags herself over the threshold of Regina’s room before her hand lands on something small and hard.

 

It’s a matchbook. Emma stares at it with rising confusion and fear, and she leaves it behind and crawls to the bed. 

 

The bed is empty. The cuff is still there, but it’s open.

 

The matchbook lies on the floor, obscured by the smoke but still present, and Emma understands at last. The Shade hadn’t started the fire. This had been Regina’s last stand.

 

And now she’s gone.   
  


* * *

  
“If you’re going to take my soul, then get it over with,” Regina growls. She doesn’t give the Shade the satisfaction of struggling against her shadow bindings. She will not go down fighting uselessly, begging for her mind and her heart. No, she’ll face him with the dignity and defiance of a queen.

 

The Shade smiles thinly. He hasn’t looked away from her since she’d been tied up here, his black eyes cold and focused and unyielding. “I still have use for you. You’re no good to me as long as the other is still out there.” 

 

“Emma.” Regina spits out the name, disgusted at the idea of the Shade touching her as well, chaining her back in wreaths of shadows. “She won’t know to come down here. She doesn’t know this cavern exists.” It’s a lie, of course. Emma has read through Regina’s whole life, and she knows all of Regina’s secrets. She knows that this room exists beneath the library, and she’ll know how to get there. 

 

“Still you lie,” the Shade says disapprovingly, and shadows slither around her neck. They don’t tighten, don’t choke her or seep into her skin. They’re a casual reminder that she’s done for, and she loathes them more than the shadows that hold her wrists and ankles. “The other will be led here regardless.” He waves a slow hand, gesturing behind him, and Graham materializes out of nowhere. He stands, dead-eyed, another mockery of a queen who’d once ruled him instead. “Go. Find Emma Swan. Tell her what I’ve done with her lover.” Graham vanishes again.

 

He smiles. Somehow, he can mimic the outside shell of a human, but anything deeper becomes unfathomable, shadows speckled with stars like the night sky beneath his lips. “Did you think I would take any risks after twenty-eight years of waiting? I will have you both.” His eyes still don’t leave hers, and he lets out a sound almost like a rapturous moan. “Souls steeped in darkness and still light. You were fool enough in the other timeline to believe I was released by the Dark One. I’ve always been here.” He smiles again, and Regina is seized by nausea at the emptiness in his mouth. “But that  _ sacrifice _ – the light embracing the dark and releasing it– I so rarely get to feast. And you may have been cast back in time, but your souls remember.” 

 

“Go to hell,” Regina snarls, refusing to tear her eyes from him. “You’re wrong. There’s no  _ light  _ in my soul.” The only light that remains is a reflection, like the light of the moon, Henry and Emma casting light over her until she can deceive others into believing it’s who she is.

 

The Shade laughs, dry and unmoved. “Did you think I only watched your lover? I stood over you as often as I did her. You saw me in her life and never bothered to cast an eye on the shadows behind you. You’ll do.” He doesn’t budge from his place, confident as more and more shadows curl around Regina’s body. She doesn’t rage or curse or respond in any of the ways she desperately wants to. Instead, she makes herself steel, makes herself ice, makes herself invulnerable though she knows it’s only an illusion.

 

She’s run on less in the past. “Don’t wait on my account. I’d sell my soul right now for an end to your tiresome prattling,” she says haughtily. 

 

The Shade just watches her in silence, and she glares back, determined to match his stillness and preternatural patience. She’s done worse than this. She’d lived as a prisoner in a king’s palace with a crown on her head, and she’d spent eighteen years in Storybrooke with no one but a book as her companion. The worth of her soul has always been variable.

 

Behind the Shade, in her periphery, she sees something shift, moving like rocks shifting in the darkness. It rises, dark and silent, and Regina says swiftly, “And if you think I’ve endured as much in my life as I have and I still fear  _ shadows _ , you’re more a fool than anyone who’s fallen prey to you.” 

 

The Shade’s eyes have new depths each time he smiles, sucking Regina in a bit more incontrovertibly. “Bold words for a woman without even an anchor anymore.”

 

“I don’t need an anchor,” Regina says darkly, and through the dusty darkness, she can see the moment something orange flares hot. “I have a dragon.” 

 

Maleficent, twenty-eight years a dragon, hurls a flaming breath at the Shade, and Henry shouts in victory from astride her as it bursts into flame. The shadows around Regina scatter, dropping her at last, and Emma seizes Henry under one arm and jumps off Maleficent as she whips her neck around to try to catch them, too. “Not the best ride I’ve ever gotten with Uber,” she says breathlessly, running to Regina. “But I picked up enough from my book to make an entrance.”

 

Regina wants to kiss her. Instead, she takes the books from under Henry’s arm and demands, “Have you lost your mind?” 

 

Emma winces. “I didn’t want to bring them– or Henry,” she says hastily, shooting a glare at him as he wraps his arms around Regina. “But there’s nowhere safe anymore except with us. I didn’t have a choice. And hey! We got the Shade!” 

 

“No,” Regina says grimly, and she looks past Emma, past Henry’s arms and the urge to sigh with relief. Ahead of them, as Maleficent looms above them and cocks her head at the reforming Shade, shadows spring out of the dimness and lock onto her, wrapping around her mouth and seeping into her eyes as she writhes helplessly beneath them. 

 

The Shade smiles. And the dragon’s eyes go black.

 

* * *

 

“Holy shit,” Emma says, because if the others aren’t saying it, they’re definitely thinking it. She’d come riding to the rescue, certain that she’d been about to save the day– and her ride has instead been co-opted by the bad guy. This is bad. This is really, really bad. 

 

“Don’t shoot it–” Regina says, but it’s too late and Emma’s already fired a shot. It ricochets off dragon scales and back to them with terrifying speed, and Emma manages to yank Regina out of harm’s way just in time. 

 

“Okay! Okay. I have an alternative.” Emma sees it, still glinting across the cavern, and she makes a mad dash as Regina shouts her name furiously. She catches it just as the dragon roars and fire pours from its mouth–  _ no _ . Not fire.

 

It’s black and swift, hundreds of shadows joined together and as potent as fire. Emma leaps out of the way and swings the sword she’d picked up from the ground, watching in dismay as the shadows take hold of it instead of it slicing through them. They yank at the sword and Emma holds on stubbornly, flying through the air and smashing against the dragon’s jaw as she pulls at the sword. 

 

Henry’s trusty spotlight flickers on, directly at the shadows wrapped around the sword, and Emma’s tumbling back toward the ground, tensing her back in anticipation, windmilling desperately–

 

She lands on a bed of shadows. The Shade says amusedly, “Well, I can’t have you dead when we’re this close, can I?” 

 

It’s Regina who’s shining the spotlight now, charging forward to Emma as she sweeps the shadows away. “Don’t  _ touch  _ her,” she growls out, yanking Emma back to her. “You idiot,” she growls, lower. “You threw yourself at a dragon for a  _ sword _ ?”

 

“It’s my father’s,” Emma says. They’d gone to Gold first, after they’d discovered the fire. He’d taken their revelations in stride and then offered Emma the sword. Graham had appeared just moments later. “He slayed this dragon with it before, right?” 

 

Regina swings the spotlight back to Henry, who holds the books and waits for them patiently. “Idiot,” she mutters again, sliding her hand into Emma’s and pulling her with her as she stalks back to Henry. “Just like your father.” 

 

“Don’t think I don’t know about that creepy time you hit on my dad right before you poisoned my mom,” Emma mutters back, pleased at the way Regina’s head jerks and her jaw tightens. As  _ if  _ Emma has the monopoly on embarrassing moments between the two of them. 

 

“That was a distraction,” Regina grinds out. “Can you not talk about that in front of our son?” 

 

The  _ our son  _ twinges at something deep down. Emma squeezes Regina’s hand and is immeasurably grateful that she’s still ensouled, snark and all. “I screwed up,” she says. “Earlier. I screwed up when I trapped you in the house.” 

 

Regina huffs, and Emma is more relieved at the irritation than she would have been dismissal. “Yes, you did. Nearly killed me.” There’s still a crackling fire where Maleficent had struck the Shade, and she sidesteps it neatly as the dragon roars behind them. “And certainly not the situation I’d have imagined for...well.” They’ve reached Henry, who can  _ not  _ hear this conversation. Emma looks at Regina in astonishment. There are high spots of color on her cheeks, and the slightest hint of a smirk. “If we survive this, of course.”

 

Henry still catches on to the gist, naturally. “I can’t believe we’re about to get our souls sucked out by a shadow demon and you two are  _ flirting _ ,” he says in disgust. 

 

The dragon roars again, and another burst of shadow-flame hurtles toward them. They scatter, Emma diving to the left, and the shadows burn at her side as though they’re both flame and shadow at once. Which is– impossible. Right? Those are two elements in opposition.

 

Except Henry is shouting something frantic and his hands are red with heat, the books in his hands turning to black ash as Regina looks on in horror. “Take them away from him!” Emma shouts unnecessarily, and Regina yanks a book from him and it crumbles into dust. 

 

“No!” Henry shouts, and the dragon roars again, another stream of shadows that tear into the books. Regina grabs his hands, pulls him to her, and the books fall to the ground in a heap of ashes that curl orange and then black. “No, no, no,” Henry chants, straining against Regina’s grip. 

 

“It’s done,” she says, her face colorless and her eyes narrowed. “It’s done, sweetheart. We couldn’t stop it.” 

 

Emma runs to them as the Shade strides forward, raises her sword and stands before them, and Regina murmurs, “Don’t be a fool.” 

 

“I’m not letting him get at either of you,” Emma says, and finally, the adrenaline has faded. Finally she’s nothing more than a shaky sense of  _ survive, survive _ , and terror for the woman and child behind her. And she doesn’t know if any of them can survive this. Their last saving grace is gone, burned to dust on the floor, and the Shade casually holds out his hand and lets Emma’s book materialize within it. 

 

Emma starts forward and Regina puts a hand on her arm. “No,” Emma croaks.

 

“Oh, yes,” the Shade says, and he drops the book into the crackling fire of Maleficent’s first flaming attack. “This is where I’ve always wanted you three.” He crooks his finger and the shadows around him rise, rise.

 

Emma steps forward, prepared to face them. This time, they don’t wash over her, leaving her with nothing more than the unpleasant sensation of sliding oil. This time, they slide  _ into  _ her, that horrible wrongness seeping into her body, and she chokes as shadows wind into her throat and mouth and nostrils and eyes. She can’t breathe, and when she inhales, it’s like sucking in poison dirt. 

 

Someone is shouting her name. She thinks. It’s becoming difficult to remember her name, if she’d ever had one at all. She remembers one name–  _ Regina _ , a book bearing it in gold– but that isn’t her name, is it? Has she ever been anything but the cosmos hollowed inside out, a shadow of something with its own existence? She breathes in again and tastes ash. 

 

A woman charges forward. She’s beautiful even while furious, even while her eyes flash with rage.  _ Regina _ , she thinks, and wants to reach for her. But there are shadows everywhere, shadows that seize the woman and pour into her with the same energy that they pull into Emma. (Emma?) She’s limp in the shadows’ embrace, and the woman lets out a choked sob and is as well, and it feels–

 

–wrong, somehow, in a way that she can’t accept. Her mind is blank, free of any thoughts or reactions about what’s happening to herself, but there is a pocket of it that remains untouched by the darkness, that is too bright to allow shadows within it.  _ Regina _ , she thinks again, and there’s a lifetime of memories that come with it. Regina must be protected. Regina endures.

 

She reaches out, and the glow of the pocket of her mind is enough that her hand does move. Her fingers reach out and touch Regina’s fingers. They hook onto hers, just as strong as her own will to seize them, and the glow surges between them and hurls the shadows away.

 

And quite suddenly, Emma is Emma again. The Shade is hissing something disbelieving and Regina is gasping with relief and Emma remembers herself, stands unsteadily and takes a step forward. “Impossible,” the Shade snarls. “I destroyed your books.” 

 

“It wasn’t enough,” says a voice from behind them–  _ Henry _ , still untouched, and Emma wants to weep and run to him. Regina’s hand tightens in hers. “They’ve spent twenty-eight years being a part of each other. They don’t need a book to anchor them anymore,” he says, smugly defiant. “You can’t just burn a book and make that go away.”

 

For the first time, the Shade’s black eyes flash with something that might be anger. The last shadows fall from Emma and Regina and then surge up again, a new attack that makes it to their joined hands before it shrivels and dies. Emma is afraid to look away from the Shade, afraid to look to Regina and dare to  _ hope _ , this might actually be a battle they can win after all. This might–

 

“Then there are other ways to destroy them,” the Shade says darkly, and he twitches his hand and the dragon descends.

 

She’s  _ fast _ , faster than Emma had ever expected, and Emma leaps forward with her sword out as Maleficent dives toward them–  _ no _ , toward  _ Henry _ , who stands defenseless and barely moves out of the way of the dragon. Maleficent doesn’t rise again. She swings her long neck and slams into Henry, sending him flying. Regina is on her at once, slamming the spotlight at her head with furious impotence, and Emma swings her sword and swings her sword and can’t penetrate the hard scales. 

 

Henry screams, the Shade laughs, and Regina lets out an unearthly cry as she throws the light into one of Maleficent’s eyes. The dragon roars in pain even while possessed, throwing Regina into a wall, and bears down on Henry again with wild fury. It rises once more, back to its fearsome height as it thrashes around, and Emma sees a desperate chance and hurls her sword at its belly.

 

The sword hits something glowing within it and the dragon howls again, louder and wilder than before. And then–  _ and then! _ – it stops short and falls. An unnatural-looking egg rolls from where Emma had punctured its belly and cracks open. And the dragon’s head drops beside an openmouthed Henry and exhales a final puff of shadow breath.

 

Emma’s moving forward in an instant, the victory forgotten, and Regina is up and running to Henry at the same instant. The Shade stands atop the dragon’s head, smug in victory, and Emma pulls Henry to her as Regina pulls them both to her, no protection left for Henry beyond their arms around him. 

 

“You can’t protect him,” the Shade says smugly. “You had no books, no reason why he lives. You will suffer, and then you will die.” 

 

“Go to hell,” Regina snarls, and then the shadows are upon them.

 

Emma squeezes her eyes shut and remembers, wrapped around Henry, the look on his face when he’d blinked up at her for the first time,  _ my name’s Henry. I’m your son _ . She remembers a picture from her book of Regina in her kitchen, lips pressed to a chubby baby’s cheek. She remembers Henry in the mines, demanding that she believe him and  _ stay _ , and Henry sitting opposite them on the couch and giving orders like he’d been born for that role. 

 

And when she opens her eyes, it’s to Regina’s eyes squeezed shut as well, tears spilling from her cheeks as she keeps her arms around them, and she knows Regina is remembering as well. Their memories are their only protection of him right now, in the greatest danger and the only way to counter the Shade, and Henry trembles beneath their glowing line of defense as it grows, and grows, and grows.

 

It bursts into a multicolored ring of light, smashing into the Shade and every shadow in the cavern until they’re demolished, the Shade bursting into a being of pure light that screams and screams until it’s gone. The strange egg on the floor is glowing now, purple smoke rising from it as bands of light reverberate outward and nearly throw them all to the ground. Regina is sobbing and Henry is laughing, his eyes bright as Regina weeps, and Emma can only raise her eyes in wonder as the room turns lighter than day.

 

And then the purple smoke begins to pick up steam and they’re wrapped around each other again, ducking their heads as it fills the room and bursts upward through the elevator shaft. Regina’s cheek is wet against Emma’s forehead and Henry ducks into them both, and when they open their eyes, they’re standing huddled together in the street above the library. The purple smoke is clearing away, rocketing across the rest of the town.

 

It’s past dawn. Regina’s tears have dried, but she still looks at them with more sorrow than anyone who’d just defeated some kind of ultimate darkness should, and Emma doesn’t understand.

 

“What was  _ that _ ?” Emma wonders.

  
Regina shakes her head and can’t answer. Henry says, “Magic, Emma.” He sounds amazed, and Emma raises her eyes to Regina’s and begins to grasp what had just happened. “I think...I think we broke the curse.” 


	9. Epilogue

The only thing that the Shade had managed to take from him had been the memories of his book. He thinks. Henry remembers less and less of it with every minute that passes. He wishes he’d known how it had gone, if any of this is  _ supposed to–  _

 

He doesn’t know. Mom has fled from them, run back to the house with the revelation that the curse is broken. Emma had seized Henry’s hand and made to chase her, only to be waylaid by Mary Margaret– no,  _ Snow White _ – barreling down the road to them. “Emma,” she gasps, and her hands are on Emma’s cheeks, her eyes wondering. “Emma, we found you.” 

 

And Emma cries then like she hadn’t even when she’d been fighting a dragon. “Mom,” she says faintly, and Henry doesn’t know what it must have been like, when she’d believed in the curse all along and known who Mary Margaret was and still had to pretend–

 

Then David is there, too, his arms wrapped around Snow and Emma like Emma and Mom had wrapped their arms around Henry, and Henry gets pulled into this embrace but he can only think about Mom. Emma’s hands are tight around him like she might be desperately searching for an anchor, too, and Henry tears away only when Leroy charges past, shouting about making the mayor pay.

 

Emma breaks up a mob outside Mom’s house and Snow says after, “She should be locked up.” Emma swings around, her eyes wide and betrayed. Mom leans against the door and just looks tired. Snow purses her lips. “For her own safety, too.” 

 

“I’m not locking her up,” Emma says firmly, and Henry remembers how whitefaced she’d been when she’d come out of the house last night,  _ the Shade got Regina. She couldn’t escape _ . There is furious argument and Henry stands in front of Mom, protective, and listens. Mom puts a hand on his shoulder and doesn’t say anything. Emma stalks in circles on the porch and makes bold statements and looks terrified that each one might be the one to make Snow and David leave.

 

“And what happens next? She lives the rest of her life in a cage? Until you– until you execute her?” Emma flinches at her own demand. Mom doesn’t flinch, and that scares Henry more than her fear would. It’s like...it’s like she expects it now, and Henry can’t remember how the book goes. 

 

“You don’t know her like we do,” David says, and Emma laughs bitterly.

 

“I know her better than you ever will,” she says, and Snow exhales a long and heavy breath and concedes.

 

They go with Snow and David back to the apartment, which is part of the deal, Henry guesses. They eat brunch and Snow cries and Emma doesn’t cry again but she stands so stiff and wanting, like she never had been with Mary Margaret. There are meetings and reunions and it’s pretty cool, meeting all the fairytale characters. Emma is less enthused. She spends most of her time texting surreptitiously, and she smiles only at Henry and at her phone.

 

At night, they go back to the mansion so Emma can guard Mom. They drive there in record time and bang on the door but no one answers. Henry uses his key, both of them tense with what they might find inside, and they stare when they enter the foyer.

 

It’s dark inside, and it still smells like smoke. The little table by the mirror has collapsed, and the stairs are dirty and burned. Mom must have swept away the worst of it, but it had been done halfheartedly, and Emma moves from the kitchen to the living room to the study, calling Mom’s name with urgency.

 

Henry doesn’t call. He knows where Mom is. He heads upstairs and into his room, coughing in the smoke that hasn’t escaped the house yet, and Mom shifts from where she’s curled up on his bed to stare at him. “We’re back,” he says firmly, and he opens the windows before he curls up next to her.

 

She kisses his forehead and he closes his eyes, exhausted after a sleepless night and a day spent in a new reality, and she hums an old lullaby to him as he drifts off to sleep. It’s dark in his dream, and there’s something piling down on him, and he thinks he might suffocate.

 

Instead, he wakes up briefly when she shifts, and he sees Emma skid to a stop in the doorway of the room, wild-eyed. “Regina,” she says faintly.

 

Mom sits up, a hand still on Henry’s arm. She doesn’t move. 

 

Emma holds out a hand wordlessly. Her eyes are wet but so earnest, and Henry is glad when Mom finally stands up and walks to take her hand. He keeps an eye cracked open when Mom leans in to kiss Emma, because it might be gross but it’s important to see them like this, foreheads lightly pressed together and Emma finally crying again in Mom’s arms. 

 

* * *

 

Henry finds out about the knock at the door a half hour after it happens, when Mr. Gold has marked Mom in vengeance and there’s a new shadow-creature trying to suck out Mom’s soul. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Emma grits out, pacing back and forth in the station as her parents look on. “We gave Gold  _ ideas _ , didn’t we. I am  _ so tired  _ of–” 

 

“This is different,” Mom says quietly. “This wraith will only target me, and will only stop when it has me.” 

 

“Then we have a problem,” Emma says.

 

David says, “No. Regina has a problem,” and Emma jerks her head to stare at him with blazing eyes.

 

“We have a problem,” Snow echoes, and Emma turns to her mom instead, eyes round. Snow spreads her hands in defeat. “Well, you’re not going to let her die, are you?” She sounds unhappy about it, but Emma smiles and Henry smiles, too, relieved. Mom doesn’t touch Emma in front of Snow, but she squeezes Henry’s hand and Henry knows that it’s meant for Emma, too. 

 

He’s brought to Ruby while they make plans to cast the wraith into another realm, and he pesters and pesters her until she takes him to Town Hall and he sees Mom glaring up at David as vines spring out of the wall and strangle him. “Mom!  _ Mom! _ ” The vines fall.

 

Mom turns to him, her eyes wild and desperate and unlike any he’s ever seen before, and he takes a step back.

 

Emma and Snow are gone. Emma had saved Mom and been sucked into a portal instead, and Snow had jumped in after her. He goes home with David that night, sleeps in Emma’s bed and dreams that he’s down in the cavern again, dirt piling on him as he’s buried alive. He thrashes in his sleep, pushes against the ground and can’t breathe, and when he wakes up after midnight he’s still gasping for breath and terrified.

 

He crawls out of bed and writes a note for David, then pads home to Mifflin Street in his pajamas. Mom is in her own bed this time, lying very still and hardly breathing, and there are tear tracks running down her face. She holds him curled in her lap when she wakes up, cries  _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll do better _ ; and eventually her cries are slight and choked,  _ Emma _ ,  _ Emma _ , until he falls asleep with his own face wet with it as well.

 

* * *

 

Henry dreams about being buried alive almost every night. The rest he can’t remember his dreams at all, but he thinks it must be more of the same. Sometimes, he wants to ask Mom about it, but he thinks she’ll worry too much. She worries enough for both of them already.

 

It’s a long few weeks before they get Emma and Snow back, with a lot of double-dealing and Mom  _ trying  _ to be good but failing a lot, too. Henry remembers her wrapping her arms around him and Emma in the caverns and thinks that she can’t really be that evil anymore, not when she loves them so much. Villains don’t love right. Mom does. It’s that simple.

 

Sometimes he goes to David when it gets to be too much. Mom calls David the first time, stands regally on the staircase that no contractor in Storybrooke will agree to fix and says, “I think Henry had better go home with you today.” 

 

After, David asks him if he wants to stay at the loft and he shakes his head.  _ Mom needs me _ , he thinks, but David won’t understand if he says that. “I need my mom,” he says instead, and David is puzzled but Henry thinks he might get it eventually. He tells David about the books and the Shade and a lot of things that Mom and Emma would probably never admit to anyone else. They’re private about these things, but Henry knows it’ll be enough to make David see something more. 

 

And maybe he does, because when Dr. Whale resurrects Daniel and he nearly kills Mom, David takes them both back to the house and calls Geppetto to ask him to help with the renovations for the bottom floor. 

 

Mom still screws up a lot. Henry can remember only vague wisps of his book– Neverland, sometimes, and a year in New York that he has no context for– but he’s still certain that this story ends with Emma and Snow escaping the other realm. Instead, David is under a sleeping curse and Henry is the only one who can convince Mom that the death curse she’d put in the portal will kill them instead of Cora.

 

“I can’t let her come through here to hurt you,” Mom says desperately. “I  _ can’t _ .” 

 

“What if it’s Emma you kill then?” Henry demands, clinging to her. Rumplestiltskin looks displeased at this turn of events. “What if Emma–” 

 

Mom absorbs the death curse into herself instead, stumbling back and barely able to stay upright. Emma comes out of the well and she nearly sobs in relief. 

 

“Oh, god,” Emma says, an arm around Henry, and she’s stumbling to Mom as well, her hand on Mom’s cheek and her eyes fixed on her. 

 

Snow comes out of the well next, and she watches Mom and Emma with a thoughtfulness that’s worlds apart from the reluctance that had been there before they’d fallen into the portal. 

 

* * *

 

“What did you tell her?” Mom asks. They’re sitting on the low fence outside Granny’s. The rest of the town had gone to celebrate Snow and Emma’s return, and Emma had trailed behind the others, an arm still around Henry and the other not quite at her side, as though she’d had to forcibly restrain it from wrapping around Mom. Mom hadn’t wanted to go inside, so Emma had gotten food for them both and slipped out as soon as she’d gotten a free moment.

 

Henry watches them surreptitiously from the steps. They haven’t seen him yet, but he thinks it’s good that they have a lookout. He’s not being  _ nosy _ . 

 

“What did she say to you?” Emma counters.

 

Mom scowls at her. “She didn’t  _ say _ anything. She put a hand on my back when everyone left the pawn shop and  _ smiled  _ at me. As though decades of vengeance could be put aside, just like that.  _ Stop making that face _ ,” she hisses. “It’s not funny.” 

 

Emma shrugs, nonchalant. “I told her I was in love with you,” she says, and Mom stops scowling at once. “She thinks love saved you from yourself. She’s kind of a sappy romantic.” Her eyes soften. “She also told me that she’d rather have a good relationship with me than make me miserable choosing between the people I love.” 

 

“A good tactic,” Mom says, and she still sounds uncertain. Adults are so stupid sometimes, Henry thinks, that Mom can still doubt this. 

 

Emma rolls her eyes so hard that she must agree with Henry. “ _ A good tactic _ ,” she echoes dubiously. “Do you think I lied to her to get her off your back? About  _ this _ ? Idiot,” she says fondly, and Mom stares at her askance. “I’ve loved you since you were a picture in a book,” Emma says, and her hand is shaking when it settles on Mom’s wrist. “How could I not?”

 

Mom’s eyes gleam and Henry sits back, eating his cheese danish and pretending to look down as he sneaks glances at them. Emma slides down from the fence to face Mom, her hand stroking Mom’s hair as she looks up at her.

 

“I love you,” Mom whispers. “I wish I’d told you before. I’ve loved you for so long.” She leans forward and kisses Emma, and it gets a little too mushy for Henry’s constitution. He wrinkles his nose and slips back inside to get more juice.

 

Emma pulls Mom inside a few minutes later, and there’s a hush in the diner. Everyone is staring at their joined hands, at their flushed cheeks, at the smiles neither of them can hide. Leroy snatches a knife from the table and Snow says, quietly and deliberately, “Come have a seat, ladies. Granny’s just about to bring out a lasagna.” 

 

Henry scampers to the booth before Emma and Mom squeeze in beside him, and he watches Mom struggle (with little luck, admittedly) to return Snow’s tentative smile and glows a little in response. 

 

* * *

 

He can’t sleep that night, running on too much sugar and adrenaline and an unwillingness to have  _ that dream  _ again. Instead, he pads to the kitchen and then back upstairs, to the bathroom and then back to his room, listening to the low murmur of voices in Mom’s room until they peter off to even breaths. 

 

He goes back to his room and reads for a while, and then gets up to get a cup of water when he hears the thrashing sounds. For a moment, he reconsiders the urge to throw open his mom’s door when it could just be...an adult thing he doesn’t want to know about...but then he hears Mom whispering frantically, “Emma? Emma!” and pushes the door open.

 

Emma is jerking against the bed, her breathing short and her hands pushing up, up– as though she’s trying to escape, in motions Henry recognizes at once. Mom seizes her hands, struggles to press her to the bed, and she looks wan and terrified until Emma finally jerks away with a gasping breath. “Regina,” she says at once, and reaches for her. 

 

She turns, sheepish, when Henry says her name. “I’m sorry,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “Just a bad recurring dream.” 

 

“Where you’re buried alive,” Mom says slowly, and Henry’s eyes widen. “In the cavern?” 

 

“How did you–” Emma looks at her, at Henry, and Mom and Henry stare at each other as well. “What does it mean?” she whispers. 

 

“There’s only one way to find out,” Henry says, and both his moms look at him with shared grim determination.

 

They go down there together, using the elevator shaft and stepping around the decomposing remains of the dragon. There are no more shadows down there– not even the regular kind that Henry would have expected. The cavern has been forever cleared of them. 

 

It’s hard to find the right spot at first, and Emma is crouched down and inspecting piles of ashes when Henry says suddenly, “Here.” There’s something about the spot where he’s standing that feels  _ right _ , and he doesn’t understand why but Mom nods when she comes to join him.

 

Emma uses the shovel they’d brought and digs into the ground until she hits something hard, gleaming gold letters beneath her shovel. “It can’t be,” Mom breathes.

 

It isn’t and it is. Emma digs a bit more around it, clearing out the space until it’s unmistakably a book that they’re revealing. This one doesn’t have a name on it, just a few familiar words _.  _

 

Henry opens it and sees a picture of Mom in full Evil Queen regalia, and then a picture on the next page of Emma as a baby being lifted from the wardrobe. There’s a book under her blanket. “It’s our stories,” Emma says, taking the book from Henry and flipping through the pages. “It’s all of them together.” 

 

“Who wrote this one?” Mom wonders, but there are no answers yet, nothing that can be explained just yet. The final picture in the book is the three of them huddled together in the cavern, Emma’s hand on Mom’s back and Mom’s arm around Henry’s shoulders. 

 

But more writing appears as they watch, and there are so many pages left in the book. It makes Henry hope, just as much as the book’s title does, and he tucks it under his arm as Mom waves a hand and they return to the foyer in a cloud of purple magic. “Maybe now we can  _ sleep _ ,” Mom says, sighing in relief, and Emma kisses her cheek and guides her upstairs. 

 

Henry still isn’t tired. He curls up under his blanket and turns on a flashlight, shining it down at the book and squinting at the writing on the first page. He reads until his eyelids are finally heavy and he can shut the book and leave it on his night table, the gold title gleaming bright in the moonlight.

  
_ Once Upon A Time. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! You can read more about how to support my writing [here!](http://coalitiongirl.tumblr.com/coffee) :)


End file.
